Fighting Sex Tourism

Last December a 14-member Japanese police team visited Thailand on a study tour on how to fight prostitution. Police officer Hiroyuki Kita said that there are 50,000 Thai prostitutes in Japan, about 10 percent of whom are under 18 years of age. Japanese organized crime (the yakuza) are behind the traffick in women. Kita said the number of prostitutes in Japan is falling in the wake of a concerted government campaign.

In January the Thai government announced that it would send a protest note to Japan about the publishing of a guide book for sex tourists called Textbook of prostitution in Thailand. The book was published in September 1994 and includes telephone numbers, price lists and Thai phrases to help clients buy sex in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. The first printing of 15,000 copies sold out quickly. The publisher printed a second edition under the title Thailand Night Zone Guidebook.

Thai women's groups organized an international letter writing campaign to the publisher, stating "This book is an obvious violation of our human rights as Thai women. We struggle to create a different image of Thailand, one which focuses on the beauty of Thai culture. Publications like this disregard our effort and disrespect our sisters". Write to Data House Publishing, 4-32-11-615 Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 160 Japan, and demand that they destroy all unreleased copies of the book.

Sex Tourism Online

Sex tourists have also carved out a space on the Internet. You can now read the ´Good Whores Guide to San Francisco", plus information about the best buys in Thailand, Colombia, Costa Rico, and Mexico. An online sex tourism guide to Amsterdam highlights the Russian and East European ´lovelies' now available. The following appears from a conference called alt.sex.services: "On one of my visits to a major Bangkok massage parlour, I was comfortably sitting in the lobby and discussing with the attendant the attributes of the many girls behind the glass wall...Picking out the best from over 80 gals arrayed for your inspection is difficult....my helper suggested one of the special bar areas, where they had ´some young ones'....

"Inside the other room off to the lobby sat about 12 little girls watching TV. On a command from my attendant, they all sat back up on the couches and smiled at me, with the youngest at my guess about 12....I couldn't restrain myself! I had to have one of them....she turned out to be 16 years old....I don't think her entire slit, from bottom to clit, could have been over 2 ½ to 3 inches!"

Send a message about what you think about the sexual exploitation of children to alt.sex.services. On the World Wide Web, the address is http://www.paranoia.com/faq/prostitution/