Forget Gary Glitter, We Need To Tackle The Sex Tourist Trade

[Perry]

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wa...1466-21583439/

Forget Gary Glitter, We Need To Tackle The Sex Tourist Trade

Reuters

August 22, 2008 by Lowri Turner

What an almighty dog’s breakfast the Government has made of Gary Glitter’s supposed return to the UK. Not since the launch of Terminal Five has there been such a scrum of people at Heathrow waiting in vain for a plane, albeit in this case still in possession of their own luggage. The scrum has been made up not just of the Press, but of 35 police officers hired to greet Glitter on his arrival. Why on earth was it judged necessary to have 35 policemen to escort one, admittedly pretty horrible, man off a plane and into a police station, both the plane and the station being at Heathrow? Were they planning to pass him between them like a poisoned Olympic relay baton? In any event, they have been hanging around for days with nothing to do. At time of going to press, Glitter was reportedly finally on a plane heading for the UK. He has also been barred from 20 countries, although not the one country that is waiting for him, Britain. Much of the farcical nature of Glitter’s exit from Vietnam cannot be blamed on the British Government. It was the Vietnamese who objected to Glitter’s bought-and- paid-for business class seat on a plane to Bangkok.

They felt, quite rightly, that he shouldn’t be given cushy treatment. So, Glitter bought an economy ticket, only to be upgraded by Thai Airways anyway. However, the next disastrous instalment of the Gary Glitter debate can be directly attributed to the culture of spin in Gordon Brown’s supposedly spin-free administration. Had Home Secretary Jacqui Smith not wanted a soundbite on News at 10, she might have chosen another week to unveil changes to the rules governing travel of convicted paedophiles. Instead, she announced plans for those on the sex offenders’ register to surrender their passports.

In so doing, she was clambering aboard the Glitter bandwagon. This prompted Glitter, who had said he wanted to come to the UK to avail himself of NHS heart treatment, to change his mind. Without the opportunity to pop on a plane with a new pacemaker, or an overhead locker full of free pills whenever he fancied it, Glitter didn’t like the idea of returning to Britain. Instead, at first he tried to enter Thailand, but was knocked back, before the same happened in Hong Kong. Thank goodness Jacqui Smith is not playing poker with our money, rather than Jack Straw who has done the equivalent of putting every home owner’s equity on the 2.30 at Kempton. Smith showed her hand too early. If only she had waited until Glitter was in the air, police could then have nabbed him at Heathrow. For a while we had a stand-off, with Glitter refusing to budge from Bangkok, until Thai pressure persuaded him to agree to go back to the UK. Frankly, this was an international mess-up.

Sex tourism is a hot political topic worldwide.

There is a snag, unfortunately.

It makes a lot of money.

So while all governments generally agree it is a bad thing, their motives to do something concrete about it are mixed. The Thais were very quick to board Glitter’s plane at Bangkok and be seen to deny him entry to the country. Are they so vigilant with the many thousands of single men who travel to the country every year for use of under-age prostitutes? Thailand is a stag-do destination not because of the excellence of the local green curry. Bangkok is famous instead for the bars where very young girls do things with ping pong balls we haven’t seen in Beijing this week. For every Gary Glitter, there are thousands of other sex tourists who travel to Asia with a wodge of hard currency. How they spend it seems to be less interesting to tourism bosses than the fact that they do.

Until an international decision is made and acted upon that says that child prostitution is unacceptable human slavery that will not be tolerated, poor children will continue to be abused by rich men. It is not just the Gary Glitters who should be international pariahs, but all those who profit from this awful trade: the local pimps and police who look the other way, the travel firms and the foreign govern-ments who make public statements, while quietly raking in the cash.

[Khun Talung]

While I can agree with efforts against trafficking in humans, sex tourism is somewhat harder to grapple with, when it concerns consenting adults. When a narrator uses terms like 'thousands of single men using underage prostitutes' and 'very young girls doing things with ping pong balls', her indignation is betraying the impartiality necessary to good journalism. I know for a fact that the Thai government is down on underage prostitution. I would hazard that there are no young girls, very young or otherwise, in bars in Thailand. There are frequent age checks, and no owner is going to knowingly hire them and face the consequences of being caught doing so.

On the other hand, there are underage prostitutes in Thailand just as well as in the United States, and presumably in Britain. The penalties of being caught with them in Thailand are severe. I've seen the laws, I can't remember exactly, but it's something like 15 years in prison, maybe more. No one is getting away easy with abusing minors in the Kingdom.

In factual reporting, exaggeration does not compliment the writer's intent.

KT