Philippine News Digest 78

Contents:
-US is pursuing Americans who commit sex crimes abroad

-Vatican official calls for tougher stance against human trafficking

-Balinese children vulnerable to abuse

US is pursuing Americans who commit sex crimes abroad

After the United States passed a federal law in 2003 known as the Protect Act that eliminated an obstacle for prosecutors seeking charges against Americans accused of molesting children abroad, several dozen suspected American sex tourists are now under investigation and at least four are awaiting trial. One suspect was a convicted pedophile from Baltimore accused of molesting boys in two Asian countries. Another was a doctor from Georgia who the Russian police said drugged his young victims in a St. Petersburg hotel. A third was a retired Army sergeant from Seattle who may have molested up to 50 children. Child-advocacy groups estimate that as many as 25 percent of all sex tourists abroad come from the United States. Although the data is inexact, Americans who have sex with children abroad are thought to number in the thousands, with hard-core pedophiles, casual tourists and business people taking advantage of lax enforcement, child advocacy groups and American officials say. Source: Eric Lichtblau and James Dao, 8 June 2004.

Vatican officials calls for tougher stance against human trafficking

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Vatican’s top representative to United Nations in Geneva, said during the 60th session of the Human Rights Committee April 8 that trafficking in humans is the worst among the violations of the rights of people on the move. He said that a recent international protocol on the prevention and suppression of trafficking of humans is not enough and called on governments to join forces through the “collection and sharing of data, including the strategies and routes used by traffickers.” He also called for a clear, legal protection and temporaray legal residence for victims of trafficking in their host countries and for less restriction in opening regular channels of immigration for those who freely choose to leave their home countries. Up to one million people are shuttled cross national borders every year and forced into slave-like conditions in work, sexual abuse and begging, fuelling a multi-billion criminal industry, the archbishop said. Source: The Sunday Examiner, 2 May 2004

Balinese children vulnerable to abuse

A research conducted by Natalie O’Brien, investigations editor of “The Australian” for Child Wise Australia, revealed that children and the Balinese community at large were far more vulnerable to exploitation compared others in a different location. The research was conducted in light of allegations of the existence of established pedophile networks in Bali involving long-term foreign residents and the trafficking of children within and outside the country particularly after the Bali bombing. It is generally believed that child sex offenders are attracted to and target communities which are vulnerable because of poverty, war and other destabilizing factors. Source: Child Wise Newsletter No. 72 May 2004.