Recently, March 1994, the United States placed Thailand at the top of a list of countries accused of violating women and children's rights. According to US Secretary of State for Human Rights John Shattuck, about 800,000 women under the age of 18 are employed in Thailand's sex trade - a charge which Thai authorities were quick to condemn as "grossly exaggerated."
The American presence in Bangkok and the larger cities of Northern Thailand during the Vietnam War certainly affected Thailand's sex industry, diversifying it, making it more obvious, while at the same time bringing it to the attention to the outside world.
This process had been continued by sex tourism and the emergence of lurid night life centres like Patpong, Pattaya and Phuket's Patpong Beach, all well known in the West.
Turning to the twentieth century, Western soldiers first came to Thailand in serious numbers in the wake of the Japanese surrender at the end of the second World War. There were 85 cabarets scattered across Bangkok with names like Great World, Happy World, Venus Club and Green Lantern. The greatest concentration was on one block of Nares Road "with something like 2,000 'hostesses' for the asking. Other attractions at this time included a "a nine-story building on Yaowarat Road, reputedly the world's largest whorehouse," plus a plethora strip clubs, dance halls, tea houses, etc. Why Thailand
It seems clear that US marines on R&R (or I&I; intoxication and intercourse) together with sex tourists cannot be held solely responsible for Thailand's being the capital of the sex world, or for spreading prostitution in the country.
The problem of prostitution in Thailand is extremely widespread and has traditionally been tolerated and perhaps encouraged by the Thai government. "The boom in Southeast Asia started with the U.S. presence in Vietnam. There were 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964, after the United States established seven bases in the country, that number had skyrocketed to 400,000." It was this boom, and the resulting slack after the war that was taken up by tourism, that introduced prostitution as a large-scale business to the region. This whole process was overseen by the governments of both Thailand and the United States. In 1967, Thailand agreed to provide "rest and recreation" services to American servicemen during the Vietnam War, which the soldiers themselves called, "I&I, ... intercourse and intoxication." How did the governments of these countries respond to becoming, in the words of Senator J. William Fulbright, "an American brothel"? One South Vietnamese government official responded, "The Americans need girls; we need dollars. Why should we refrain from the exchange? It's an inexhaustible source of U.S. dollars for the State." In fact, the Vietnam war was responsible for "[injecting] some $16 million into the Thai economy annually, money that tourism would have to replace after the war was over." The U.S. also encouraged mass tourism in Thailand so that the country could pay its debt back to the World Bank
Current government complicity in the "illegal" trade of prostitution can be seen on many fronts. From the soldiers to the politicians, the tourism bureau officials to the police forces, every sector of the powers-that-be have a vested interest in the continuation of prostitution; "many politicians, officials and policemen invest in the sex trade or benefit from it. In the northern province of Phrae, a senior Thai official says, policemen own some of the brothels. Thai newspapers sometimes suggest that certain politicians own chains of brothels." Indeed, in a pernicious twist to the idea of official complicity, taken to the point of collusion, "there are several recorded instances in which police, especially in rural areas, have handed escaping girls back to their abusers." One story in particular illustrates the forces arrayed against women caught up in this enterprise: When a group of prostitutes managed to escape from a brothel in Thailand earlier this year, they were reportedly caught by the police in Burma, lock up, assaulted and raped, and then released. They were almost immediately picked up again by the racketeers and returned to Thailand. .
In recent years the expression tok khiew has come to describe the process by which girls become prostitutes. The phrase means green harvest and refers to the practice among farmers of pledging a green patty in order to receive loans. Brothel owners approach poor farmers in Northern Thailand, Burma, Laos and offer to relieve some of their financial burden. Instead of a crop, however, they take in return the farmer's 12 or 13 year old daughter. The predominance of the poverty faced by rural farmers in Southeast Asia. It pushes farmers to sell their own children into prostitution, and also forces many young women to choose that avenue themselves, for frequently the income they earn in the brothel is what feeds their families at home. There are also other ways in which children and women "enter" prostitution, besides being sold by their family. Kidnapping and being promised of a job are other ways in which prostitutes enter the world's oldest profession.
At first the girls are kept in the hong bud boree sut, which literally means "the room to unveil virgins." Later they are put on display wearing numbers in the hond du or "selection" room. These are called fish tanks. These are glass windowed cubicles. Women in these rooms all wear a number on their shirts and are often doing mundane things such as watching t.v. Clients can then choose the number of the prostitute they wish to purchase.
Prostitutes are often forced to work up to eighteen hours a day, twenty five days a month with the only days off during menstruation. Often in order to work these long hours and have sex with up to six clients, prostitutes depend on drugs such as heroin.
Places of work include cabarets, hostess bars, and cocktail bars, in which the women are well dressed and appeal mostly to Thais. Women are more scantily clad in places such as Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza Here the music is loud and the atmosphere is cheaper and somewhat sleazier than the hostess lounges. Men are carrying signs standing outside the bars advertising the shows inside. In several European languages they invited tourists, both men and women, to come inside and watch the shows. There are also gay go-go bars featuring men instead of women.
Generally it is upstairs in the bars where the more blatant sexual displays and prostitution interactions occur. Such shows feature women doing various vaginal stunts involving ping pong balls, darts, cigarettes and slicing bananas to name a few. There are also exhibitions of sexual coupling and nude dancing. AIDS
Prostitutes are not permitted to refuse clients or to demand that clients wear condoms. It is estimated that 15-20 percent of Thai prostitutes are HIV positive. While, between 20,000 and 50,000 people nearly one percent of the population has AIDS. AIDS is spreading rapidly on Thailand, for the most part due to prostitution. The numbers will continue to skyrocket in the future. The World Health Organization estimates that by the year 2000, between 2 and four million Thais will have HIV, more than half of them women. The threat of AIDS explains the demand in recent years for foreign women, virgin and children. Many people believe that women from other countries are AIDS free. Virgins and young children are believed to have had too little or no experience to be exposed to AIDS.
Members of the government deny the existence of AIDS as a problem resulting from the sex trade. In 1992, a bill was passed in a meager attempt to stop the spread of disease among prostitutes. The bill legalized the sale of sex as long as the prostitutes was at least 18 years of age, and possessed a health card sating that he or she had no STDs. Unfortunately, the bill completely avoids the problems of exploitation, poverty, and corruption of brothel owners, pimps, and police officials, all of which perpetuate prostitution and the spread of AIDS.
Ultimately, much of official complacency with prostitution is tied to the view of prostitutes as a national resource. During a South Korean orientation session for prostitutes, the women were told: "You girls must take pride in your devotion to your country. Your carnal conversations with foreign tourists do not prostitute either yourself or the nation, but express your heroic patriotism." These women play a vital role in the tourism industry which, "including group sex tours, is Thailand's largest single source of foreign exchange." Ultimately, what it comes down to, is that "young Thai country women are just another kind of crop." During the Vietnam war, the World Bank recommended that Thailand pursue mass tourism as an economic strategy; and the economic initiatives consequent on the bank's report led to what is routinely described today as a $4-billion-a-year business involving fraternal relationships among airlines, tours operators and the masters of the sex industry. In this sense, sex tourism is like any other multinational industry, extracting enormous profits from grotesquely underpaid local labour and situating the immediate experience of the individual worker - what happens to the body of a 15-year-old from a village in Northeast Thailand - in the context of global economic policy.
Children are becoming more and more in demand as prostitutes. Sexual exploitation of children is an enormous part of the of the prostitution business. These children may be sold to by their parents who are desperately poor farmers and villagers. One fourteen year old girl was sold by her mother for $200, and her first client paid $300 to have sex with her. Children feel great pressure to avoid disappointing their parents who are desperate for money, and can often make the largest profit through prostitution. A second reason children are becoming more and more in demand as prostitutes is because clients will pay a high price for their virginity. After the girl mentioned above had her virginity taken, the price for her services dropped to $20. Another reason children are preferred is because they are thought to be disease free.
However, this may be a misconception for two reasons. One, is that young children may not request for the use of a condom. And two, there have been cases where doctors have done surgery on prostitutes to create the illusion of virginity, so the brothel operators may advertise girls as virgins, even though they are not.
It is alleged, by Sanphasit Koompraphat, the director of the Centre for the protection of Children's rights and that the police take bribes and that brothel owners evade Thai laws regarding child prostitution. The law states that sex with a girls under 15 years is illegal whether she agrees or not. Brothel owners get around this by forging ID cards which say that the girls are over 18, or by disguising their agencies as restaurants or beauty salons. The police are aware of both the acceptance of prostitution by Thai men and also of the enormous monetary contribution prostitution brings to the Thai economy. For these reasons, they tend to crack down on the smaller, less profitable operations, leaving the larger more influential brothels alone.
The following is a small set of links for information on the sex trade and the organizations dedicated to the cause of fighting prostitution World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
