Germany Studies Problem Of Sex Tourism
HAMBURG, Germany - The laws have been tightened. The media and the church campaign against it. But sex tourism thrives in Germany.
A series of surveys by political and church institutions has produced a picture of the sort of men who fly off to countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka specifically for cheap sex with female and male prostitutes and, more disturbingly, children.
Tourism, church and social-services officials in those countries say Japan, England and the United States also are main sources of sex tourists.
Angela Merkel, Germany's minister of women and youth, called sex tourism "modern forms of slavery" and said every effort must be made to turn society against it.
She also hit out at marriage agencies specializing in supplying German men with Third World and Eastern European wives "with exchange guarantee" if the customer isn't satisfied. Those agencies do an estimated $25 million in business a year.
After Thailand, the most popular countries are Kenya, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, South Korea, the Dominican Republic and Brazil, the survey shows.
It's estimated that between 50 percent and 70 percent of German men visiting Thailand go for the sex. Merkel reckons the same ratio for German men vacationing in Kenya, South Korea and the Philippines.
Independent studies have been commissioned by organizations such as the United Evangelical Mission in Wuppertal and the Eichstaett Catholic University.
The picture these present of sex tourists to Thailand show that men between 30 and 39 form the biggest group, followed by men 20 to 29, then by men 40 to 49.
The great majority have only rudimentary education or professional qualifications, though most have a trade. Most travel as individuals and not in groups. About one-third of those surveyed were on their first trip to Thailand; one in five had visited six times or more.
The Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka are popular destinations for German gays and pedophiles, a high proportion of them doctors, lawyers and other professionals.
The Philippines and Sri Lanka are regarded as international centers for pedophilia, and tourist industry sources said the majority of child-prostitution customers in the Philippines are German.
The number of child prostitutes in the Philippines is estimated at between 40,000 and 60,000, two-thirds of them male. About 30,000 boys aged 6 to 15 work as prostitutes in Sri Lanka.
As part of the campaign against such tourism, German law was altered this summer making sexual abuse of children illegal even when committed abroad.
The number of female prostitutes in Thailand is estimated to be 1.5 million, of whom 30 percent are reckoned to be AIDS-infected. This has led to a so-called "baby-prostitution" trend among European, U.S. and Japanese sex tourists, since sexual contact with children is reckoned to be less of an AIDS risk.