Leave Those Hookers Alone!

Women's and childrens' rights advocates yesterday reprimanded police for their undercover operation to catch student prostitutes, many underage, that wend overboard, leaving misguided adolescents scarred and the root causes of commercial sex untouched.

Chanwipa APisuk, director of the Sex Workers' Rights Protection Centre, said the legal rights of minors had been ignored by police in their eagerness to win credit by publicising the mass arrest. "Children under 18 are entitled to exemption from criminal proceedings, and police are behaving as if these suspected sex workers were felons," she said.

On Thursday crime-suppression police rounded up 18 suspected student prostitutes who had advertised on the Internet and in magazines. The women reported their ages from 18 to 28, but police believe some were as young as 16.