The Thai dilemma: what to do with sex trade
Thailand is debating whether prostitution should be legalised. All the groups
concerned will air their views at a public forum next month
When Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, during his recent visit to Thailand, spoke
in right earnest about the two countries joining hands to boost tourism by
offering combined destinations, those in the know of things may have chuckled.
For Thailand’s main, call it fatal if you like, attraction, is sex.
No doubt, Thailand has well developed beaches, infrastructure and budget hotels
offering five-star comforts. Capital Bangkok offers cruises with tastefully
bedecked trawlers going gently down the river as you drink in the concrete
jungle that passes off for a city. Sitting on the upper deck, sipping your
favourite Scotch and listening to the karaoke band in attendance is an
experience in itself. You feel the romantic setting is complete when the
Filipino crooner sings, “Country road, take me home” or “You were always
on my mind”, songs of the fifties and sixties that transport you into another
world. But that’s for middle-aged men with wives in toe.
What attracts tourists, mostly from the west, is the sex trade. Sukamvit Road in
Bangkok, akin to M G Road in Bangalore, teems with jazzy pick-up bars that come
alive at sunset. You can go bar hopping on Sukamvit Road and finish the night at
Dosa King, run by Mr Rao from Karnataka who has been in Bangkok since 1955, who
is general manager of a company and who runs the ethnic restaurant to give his
wife a chance to show her culinary skills. If you ask around, you can find
places like Patpong where live shows are on.
Pattaya, 180 km from Bangkok, has a beach where you can find street walkers,
gays, lesbians and what have you. But unlike in the red-light areas of Mumbai or
Calcutta, you can take a walk on the beach road and have a quiet dinner at an
Indian restaurant over there or stroll down the dazzling Walking Street any part
of the night without any hassles. Besides, Thailand also has massage parlours a
dime a dozen and foot massage is their forte. But as a recent raid on one such
parlour in Bangkok and the arrest of masseuses show, they are more often than
not fronts for flesh trade.
No doubt, you find sex workers in any place of tourist or pilgrim interest
anywhere in the world. But in Thailand, it is sex tourism that drives the
industry. As is to be expected, it comes at a heavy price. One million out of
Thailand’s 63 million people are afflicted with AIDS and it has become the
number 1 killer in the country. There is a 1996 Act that is meant to suppress
prostitution but its main aim is to save child prostitutes. Like elsewhere in
the world, the sex trade thrives because the police turn a blind eye to it. So
open and widespread has it become that Thailand has come to be known as the sex
capital of the world with one of the largest incidences of AIDS. Now the
Government is pondering whether prostitution should be legalised. This follows
an announcement by the Justice Ministry that it plans to hold a public forum on
this issue next month. Hundreds of concerned State law enforcers, academics,
NGOs working with sex workers, women’s groups, human rights activists and
religious leaders are expected to debate the issue. The conclusions drawn from
the deliberations are to be submitted to the Justice Ministry’s law reform
committee.
Bangkok Post, Thailand leading English newspaper, has quoted Charnchao
Chaiyanukij, director-general of the Rights and Liberties Protection Department
who will be playing a leading role in hosting the forum, as saying that though
prostitution is illegal in the country, “it is the largest underground
business accounting for several billion baht a year”.
According to Ms Janthavipha Aphisuk of Empower Foundation who has worked with
sex workers, there are 2 to 2.5 lakh prostitutes in the country, most of them
from poor, uneducated families. She supports legalising prostitution as sex
workers will then become tax payers and will, therefore, enjoy all the rights
that other tax payers enjoy like health care and also the right to sue employers
who exploit them or customers who abuse them physically.
The paper quotes Nam, a 28-year-old prostitute working in a nightclub in Bangkok
as saying that she never feels secure when she goes out with a customer. She
says,”I have no chance of knowing my fate. I could be beaten up or gang-raped,
but I cannot complain because the police will arrest me”. A 32-year-old gay
tells the experience of two gays who were picked up from Bangkok by two
foreigners. They took them to Pattaya beach, beat them up, had sex with them and
videographed the whole affair. Legalising the profession will protect the rights
of sex workers, they say.
Critics, however, contend that legalising prostitution will only bring more
women into the profession. The deputy rector of the Buddhist University says
prostitution is against Buddhism and he knows of no Buddhist country which has
made it legal. As he sees it, no woman wants to be a prostitute. She is driven
into it by poverty and illiteracy. The Government should, therefore, address the
core issue and try to reduce the number of women in sex trade. Whatever be the
outcome of the public debate, this is the first major step the Thai Government
is taking to focus attention on the world’s oldest profession.
S Murari recently in Bangkok AIDS scares away donors
A study conducted by the Thai Government has shown that there were nearly a
million AIDS patients in the country at the end of 2001. Of them, 6.7 lakh were
men, 2.2 lakh women and 22,000 children. Around 55,000 adults and children died
of AIDS at the end of 2001. Nearly 2.9 lakh children under 15 lost either or
both parents to AIDS. Nearly 30,000 new infections occur each year. Many
international donors who left Thailand during the epidemic “boom years” have
not returned.
Thailand was the first country in Asia to document HIV epidemics among IV drug
users and female sex workers and their clients. After a brief period of denial,
the country organised a national programme, supervised from the highest levels
of government, to respond to the epidemic.
Recognising that most HIV transmissions were through commercial sex, efforts
focused on reducing the number of males visiting female sex workers and on
promoting condom use in all commercial and casual sexual contacts. As a result,
the number of men visiting sex workers has fallen from almost 25 per cent of the
population to about 10 per cent. Condom use when visiting sex workers has become
the norm.
However, the success of Thailand’s 100 per cent condom programme has not had
much effect on the slow, but steady transmission of HIV from infected male
clients of female sex workers or from infected male IV drug users to their
regular sex partners. There has also been limited success in reducing HIV
prevalence among the IV drug user population.
SM
[Deccan Herald, Sunday, October 19, 2003]