Foreigners such as myself have, however, played a role in Thailand's transition,
to varying degrees. The young Australian do-gooder Amanda Fairweather, who
wrote the above-cited commentary, has correctly identified sex tourism as one
of the areas in which foreigners have affected a portion of Thai society. As
ASG has documented previously, in
Learning the Thai sex trade this industry has become an important part
of the Thai economy.
Ms Fairweather and her ilk have decided that the Thai sex industry is bad, and
she claims she even spent some time in "the prostitution capital of the world",
Pattaya, where she made some sort of effort to snuff out this evil. She does
not explain what exactly she did there, other than talking to a single bargirl
who claimed to be under-aged (betraying in the process her ignorance of Thai
law regarding minors); apparently she decided there was nothing to be done
other than flee back to the comforts of home in Australia and plead with her
compatriots not to come here if their intention is to consort with people she
has decided are "prostitutes".
Let's not beat around the bush: the Thai entertainment industry, as practiced
in Pattaya and elsewhere, is not all sweetness and light. Yet instead of
zeroing in on the genuine problems experienced by the Thai working class
(including those in the sex trade), and trying to work with the Thais to find
practicable solutions, a certain sector prefers to grind its own moral ax,
shoring up its viewpoints with horror stories that at best are cherry-picked
and unrepresentative or, at worst, are simply invented.
There is no need to go through Fairweather's article point by point to tear its
premise to shreds; any open-minded person who has spent any time observing the
real Pattaya nightlife can do that. But one needs to do a bit of research to
discover exactly why anyone would write such tripe.
"My friends and I," confesses Ms Fairweather, "worked at the Tamar Center, an
organization dedicated to seeing the end of sexual exploitation (whether
circumstantial or otherwise) of the poor in Pattaya. Those who wish to leave
prostitution can come to the center, learn other life and vocational skills,
and have free access to child care."
What she conveniently fails to mention is that the Tamar Center is operated by
Youth With A Mission, an organization whose purpose is proselytizing people
into Christianity and which, oh, by the way, "is in need of another US$1.5
million to build a training super center". Most non-Buddhist groups struggling
for credibility in Buddhist Thailand enjoy severely limited success, though
they have made some laudable strides in a few areas, such as hospices for AIDS
sufferers. Judging by Fairweather's brief observation of the Tamar Center, that
facility is not a ringing success story:
"Unfortunately," sobs Fairweather, "as in Australia, many prostitutes choose
not to take advantage of such assistance due to the expected lower income, and
drug addictions."
Here the writer gets painfully close to seeing the reality, but since it is not
acceptable to either her anti-sex morality or the proselytization crusade of
YWAM, she needs to qualify it by throwing in a non sequitur, "drug addiction"
(not sufficiently horrified by Pattaya's bar scene to fire off a check to YWAM?
Let's bring in another bugaboo, nasty drugs).
And here is the reality: The main reason Thais work in the sex-tourism industry
that the money is good. Period. Why do they want good money? Well, why do you
want good money? If you are a "drug addict", that could be a motivation,
certainly. But maybe you just want to support your kids or your aging parents.
Maybe you want to be able to afford designer jeans.
There are drug addicts in Pattaya. There are drug addicts in Khorat, in Hong
Kong, in Kansas City. Some addicts are prostitutes, but not all. And some
prostitutes (and shop clerks, and investment bankers) are addicts, but not all.
Should there be more options available to young Thais to get good-paying jobs,
jobs that pay better and offer greater professional satisfaction than working
in a tourist-oriented bar as a dancer or waitress, a job that usually (though
not always) involves prostitution? Of course there should. Thailand needs a
viable economic policy that does not depend solely on competing with other
low-wage sweatshop economies such as China and the Philippines. It needs to
stop repressing its labor movement, and abusing illegal Burmese, Cambodian and
Lao immigrant workers. It does not need to convert to Christianity.
But as long as Thailand is ruled by a fiscally neo-liberal political party
(Thai Rak Thai), and as long as economic globalization continues to be hijacked
by corporate fat cats in the West, the opportunities for young people in
Thailand and elsewhere in the developing world will be minimized. For now, at
least some here are able to escape the drudgery of the farm fields or the slave
wages of the factories for the relatively easy money of the entertainment
industry. But Ms Fairweather and her pals want to cut off even that option.
Unfortunately, paranoid lawmakers in Bangkok read articles such as
Fairweather's and even though they know they are largely poppycock, they are
concerned about the damage they do to Thailand's reputation. And so they
victimize the entertainment industry, willfully ignoring the fact that such an
approach has failed miserably in the West, where the worst side-effects of
prostitution are rampant. The result? Unregulated street prostitution is on the
rise in Thailand, with its attendant dangers, including a likely resurgence of
sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse and under-age sexploitation, the
precise social ills Fairweather claims she wants to prevent.
Meanwhile, would-be visitors to Thailand are hearing of the more ill-considered
campaigns by the government and police against the entertainment industry -
early bar closing times, forced urine tests for foreigners, etc - and are
increasingly taking their tourist dollars elsewhere. The Thai tourism industry,
once the envy of all other Asian countries, is languishing under the triple
whammy of muddle-headed government policies, the specter of terrorism, and the
after-effects of last year's tsunami.
And who gets hurt? The very young people Ms Fairweather wants to save in the
name of Jesus.
Simon Tearack is a Bangkok-based journalist.
