Travels in the Land of Hunger

BACK IN BANGKOK

The following will provide a short history and explanation of how the sex industry operates in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand. The first written accounts by Europeans concerning prostitution in Siam (Thailand) was by Dutch traders in 1604. One of these accounts from the 17th century explained that a "Thai official was given a government license ... to establish a prostitution monopoly" and that it was "staffed with six hundred women whom he purchased for this purpose."4 Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson explain in their book Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle that "much of the early prostitution in the Kingdom, in fact, was an extension of concubinage or slavery (often debt based, as it is in the present)" and that "in the patriarchal, feudal society of Siam the number of concubines a man possessed provided a measure of his power."5 Donald Wilson in his 1994 article "Prostitution in Thailand: Blaming Uncle Sam" stated that as a result of the Bowring Treaty of 1855 that liberalized foreign trade in Siam (and admitted foreign laborers into the country) that thousands of southern Chinese workers emigrated to the country to work in the tin mines followed by thousands of prostitutes.6 Wilson goes on to explain that in the 1940s there were approximately 85 cabarets on Nares Road, "with one block sporting about two thousand hostesses, and that Yaowarat Road reputedly housed in a nine-story building the largest brothel in the world."7

"Bangkok also enjoyed the dubious reputation of being a major producer of pornographic movies during the 1940s. From 1902 until 1960, prostitution was legal in the Kingdom. It being made illegal opened the door for the corruption and victimization that so characterizes the industry today."8

It should also be noted that although slavery (the buying and selling of adults and children) was abolished in 1908 as part of the enactment of the Criminal Code that "a child could still be offered as a gift to a debtor, by way of cancellation; a girl could be offered as debt payment and she would become the mistress of the creditor, since this was not expressly forbidden."9

"Later, even when the Civil and Commercial Code was enacted and the trading in persons was outlawed, ways around the commerce in children given as labour on the land of others, ensured that traditions were perpetuated ...

"The rights and duties of children remained under parental control until 1934 ..."10

Although prostitution was declared illegal in Thailand in 1960 under the Prostitution Suppression Act, the Entertainment Places Act in 1966, which provided legislation for the regulation of "nightclubs, dance halls, bars, massage parlours, baths and places 'which have women to attend male customers' " signaled that prostitution would be tolerated to an extent.11 Soon after, in 1967, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. government contracted Thailand to "provide 'Rest and Recreation' (R&R) services to the troops."12 Charles Keyes goes on to explain in his book Thailand: Buddhist Kingdom as Modern Nation-State that the presence of U.S. troops during the war "helped create a new wealthy class in Thailand from among those people who held contracts for construction or service to the United States or the Thai military. It also contributed markedly to corruption in the military and police, as well as to a dramatic rise in prostitution, alcoholism, and drug use."13 Thus by 1970, US military personnel (numbering up to 70,000 men14) were spending in excess of $20 million.15

In 1971, Robert McNamara (U.S. Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War) visited Bangkok in his role as president of the World Bank and "arranged to send the bank's tourism experts to plan the development of Thailand's tourist industry."16 In 1975 the bank's Tourism Projects Department issued a report that "assessed the growth potential of tourism ... irrespective of R&R."17,18 This "growth potential" of Thailand's tourism industry was more the result of the envisioned and targeted increase in the "single traveler with disposable income (which, in the first instance, means an unaccompanied male)"19 to Thailand who would continue to provide–in peace time–the demand for the R&R services established during the war. As a result, Robert McNamara (who oversaw the 1967 R&R contracts in his role as U.S. Secretary of Defense) negotiated the World Bank's agreement with Thailand20 confident in the country's ability to repay the loan in part due to its thriving sex industry and growing sex tourism industry.