ShibbOleth, I have heard the same about Thailand, and know it to be true about the Philippines. The vast majority of the prostitution involves the locals. The places catering to the tourists are flashier and perhaps better known, but they are far out-numbered by the more discrete places catering to the locals.
Where I live in the Philippines there are maybe a dozen large bars catering to the tourists, but there are thousands of small little bars catering to the locals.
BTW, my experience here in Asia is that the places you go drinking and dancing are called discos, the places where you go to drink and find prostitutes are called bars.
Not disputing it, ShibbOleth: I’ve heard the whole “live show” spiel from the touts, including in the gay strip I wandered into looking for a restaurant {The Green Mango - it exists, I tell you} - I was kind of perturbed to be approached so brazenly, too.
Just an update on the OP:
The Thai police now say that this was a confusion – the boy seen with the German man was not Walker. The doctor who started this all now says that all European children look alike. This means that Walker is still missing post-tsunami.
Link here in Swedish. Sorry, no English language cite.
You’re kidding, right? Thailand has huge problems with sex tourism and with foreigners coming in from the US and other Western Countries to have sex with minors. All Asian countries with the exception of Japan have huge problems with human trafficing, including selling children of all ages into prostitution in Western-themed brothels.
Think Unicef is just whining?
I went to your link, but don’t know where in all of the links they post, to find numbers from them that support this. Heck, in my opinion one child sold into slavery or forced to have sex is one to many. I’m just saying that I never saw any evidence to indicate this when I lived in Thailand. Lack of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence, but I want to see some sort of evidence of this. The only person I ever even heard of doing this (in that they were caught on video) was an important Thai member of parliament, who certainly should have known better. And just as importantly, where would this occur? There are all kinds of Thai sex businesses, for sure, but the ones that seem to be most conducive to this are the Thai brothels (I’ve read stories alleging girls chained to their beds in these places). And there are lots of Thai places that are “off limits” to foreigners. For that matter, there is a street next to Patpong that is “off limits” to most non-Japanese. Anyway, prositution is a “gray market” in Thailand, not officially allowed but not entirely forbidden. So, as with many things there (like the population, for example) it’s not the sort of thing one can look up in an reference book and expect it to be accurate.
What makes it truly tragic is that it was a little white kid, not one of those interchangeable brown people.
Malaysian, Laotian, Sri What? Who can keep all that shit straight?
God. . .pass the drunken noodles already, would ya?
From ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) International:
Hi Bricker,
Thanks for the cite. One problem that I see with NGO’s is that they need people to contribute money for them to stay in existence, and I would think it is possible that some of them might exagerate to be able to receive more contibutions. So, I do not really know whose statistics would be more accurate, the Thai goverment, who probably has their own agenda, or the NGO’s.
Also, I do sometimes get tired of dispelling stereotypes or misbeliefs that many people have about a world that they have not seen first-hand. For example, if I were not an American, I would probably be scared to death to travel to America.
Much of the news that is reported about America is very negative.
Many people have the view that America is a very violent, unsafe place.
I am an American, so I know America is safe, but for those that have never beeen to America before, they may very well believe every negative they have heard, and be very afraid to travel to America.
So, what I am trying to say is that I think more people need to get out in the world and see for themselves what is really out there.
And, my experience has been that I have not been exposed to child prostitution.
Maybe it is much more common with the locals, I do not know that to be true or not true, so I cannot comment on that. But, I do know that as a tourist, I did not see, and was not offered child prostitution.
Bad things happen everywhere in this world, in every country, I am sure if you look hard enough, you will find the bad things you are looking for. That does not mean it is common there, it just means it is possible to find it.
The anecdotal evidence/argument from ignorance is rather meaningless. The question is not “did I see child prostitutes,” but “do they exist?” The answer to the second question is, sadly, “yes, in abundance.”
See, for example, http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TRAVEL/NEWS/08/25/childsex.tourism.ap/ or http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/11/22/asia.childsex/
For more, google “sexual tourism”, children, thailand and sift through the results. I got 200,000 hits.
The good news is the US is trying to do something about it, and it’s been one of those rare good things Bush has done. http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/2004/0422/p11s01-wogi.html.
Of course, don’t expect him to broaden his concern for the world’s children to end other kinds of child labor.
Wow. I’ve been falling this story since yesterday and I can’t imagine the heart ache and pain for the parents. He’s dead, he’s alive, he’s kidnapped, he’s nowhere that we know of.
Thanks for the update.
simple homer, here is a typical story about the orphans. UNICEF is treating it seriously, although it may be a hoax. I hope it is the latter.
Just fixing the link.
From the second link you provided:
This is, on it’s face without any supporting data, a ludicruous statement. Estimated by whom? The 2004 GDP estimate by the CIA for Thailand is 477 Billion dollars. So 15% of that is USD 71,550,000,000. Sex with a prostitute in Thailand costs somewhere between $25-100/night. Let’s say it’s the high end. Then let’s quadruple it since the forbidden (child sex) is assumptively more expensive. At the high end that’s $400/night. Now, that number alone would make it one of the most expensive things you can buy in Thailand (roughly four times the rate of a night’s stay in a 5 star hotel). That would make it 179 million sex acts a year with children. Now Thailand has around 10 million visitors per year for the last year I can find data (2002). That makes 18 visits to a child prostitute per visitor per year (since the average Thai person makes about $400/month I’m going to assume that only a very small number of Thais could afford this service) for every single tourist who visited the country during the course of the year. That’s a whole lot of shaggin’ going on.
It’s more likely that someone did some erroneous extrapolation from some numbers or made this up from whole cloth. It probably helps generate donations. But it drives me nuts that journalists eat this up without doing a basic logic check against it, since it’s really perceived by Thais as a slander against their country. I’m not sure it behooves the NGOs to just create outrageous numbers like this, although apparently some people will buy it quite easily.
Again, my observations do not mean that child prostitution does not exist in Thailand; I’m merely having doubts about the numbers thrown about. If it did exist on that scale you’d certainly run across it in Bangkok somewhere. It’s a huge city, in terms of numbers of people and land mass covered, but it’s also very small in terms of the foreign/expat community. There’s only one area of Bangkok that foreigners frequent that I’ve not been to, and that’s the backpacker area around Khao Sarn road. Maybe that place is infested with millions of paedophiles and child prostitutes. But the kids who visit there can’t afford that kind of dosh, either.
A $71 BILLION industry is being kept hidden ? I really think some organizations are exaggerating to keep themselves in business.
Shibboleth:
I am unable to find the ILO report and their explanation for the dramatic figure you name. I don’t doubt it is not simply tricks times dollars, though. It may include all costs incurred by those going to Thailand to rape children, for example. You don’t even consider people living in Thailand might be a part of it, or the dead certainty that their figures include profits from child pornography. In any case, whether that figure is correct or not is irrelevent to the bigger point that child prostitution in Thailand is (a) prevalent, and (b) a problem. I doubt you would disagree with either of those statements, so I’m not sure what you are trying to do by regressing to your meaningless anecdotes of not seeing it (or not recognizing it) or doing spurious number crunching on flyby statistics.
Well, it ISN’T a secret, and your second comment is so dumb I don’t know how to respond. Do you suppose that organizations to end child prostitution crop up around a nonexistent cause just to engage in self-perpetuation? Talk about having your head in the sand… and that’s a nice way of suggesting where your head is.
Cricetus,
Did I say nonexistent ??? No, I said that maybe they are exagerating the truth .
Many NGO’s operate on donations, and yes, I do believe that some of them are inflating their numbers in order to gain more sympathy and money for their cause.
Also, have you ever travelled outside your own country before ? It is easy for you to sit at your little computer and insult me, but at least I am out here seeing the rest of the world, and learning about reality for myself instead of believing everything I read.
But do you have any EVIDENCE that they have exaggerated their numbers? Have you read their reports and explanations? No? In that case, you are making rapid assumptions, and making further assumptions based on the first set of assumptions. That makes you, in my mind, a rube. I don’t care if you’ve been “out here” (wherever that is). Anecdotal evidence is not meaningful. Argument from ignorance is still a fallacy. If you mistake your random observations as a tourist to be some kind of broad perspective on a country, you are a fool. You may travel for pleasure, and it is your right, but you do not learn much from travel if you aren’t going to learn, and seek out information, rather than assume that whatever you see is all there is.
I’ve lived on four continents. My computer isn’t that little. Neither of those facts are relevent.