How About Sex Tourism, did you forget anything?
Dear Friends at the BBC,
I was just viewing your programme Fast track travel and while it has touched
on many of the problems of the travel industry it failed to note the
destructive nature of sex tourism that is ravaging the lives of millions of
women and above all helpless children throughout the world.
The high paying foreign tourists fleeing more stringent law enforcement in
Northern countries use their spending power to bribe tourist police and
local officials in poorer southern countries like the Philippines, Thailand
and Sri Lanka to allow them to exploit and sexually abused children with
impunity aided and supported by the complacent tourist industry. All
brothels and their fronts, such as bars, clubs karaokie and discos ,cannot
operate without a city permit or a license in other words the sex tourist
business is licensed to operate and there is no implementation of law
,social restraint or care even if children are offered for sex even if they
are as young as eleven .
The present secretary of tourism here, Dick Gordon, earned his reputation as
the czar of sex tourism for the US military in Olongapo City at Subic bay
for over twenty years. This is how high government officials view the future
of fast track tourism in the Philippines it
seems. Get a man with the right experience to get the industry back on track.
I am a Irish missionary working here in the Philippines for 33 years can go on
the streets casually dressed and i will be mistaken for a sex tourist. As I
have recorded on hidden cameras over the years for TV documentaries ,a local
pimp will approach every few minuets and offer children for sex as young as
eleven for as little as forty US dollars. A virgin child they say, will cost
more about US $100.
Why the BBC does not cover this aspect of tourism I don't know. I do know that
sex tourism targeting vulnerable street children and impoverished girls it
is causing much resentment among many people of the south and giving
ammunition to religious fundamentalists to justify their terror attacks on
helpless innocent tourists.
Kidnappings, murders and bombing are just the expression of an anger that has
turned to hatred of what they see as the evil and decadence of northern
capitalist and hedonistic tourist practices. True there is strong political
motivation behind the attacks on tourist destinations like in Spain , the
Philippines and Bali, but a more serious condemnation of the practice and
legislation to stop the child pornography ,(the advertisement arm of the
child sex tourism) , has to be curbed.
The BBC can make a serious and influential impact for good, by reporting in a
comprehensive way, this evil tourist trade in children for sexual
exploitation.
Shay Cullen
Founder Preda Foundation.
(For children's rights).
www.preda.org
