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Nina Rao: Department of Tourism, College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi, India
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: E-mail: [email protected]
The World Tourism Organisation and the World Travel and Tourism Council have made presentations to captive audiences on the Vision 2020, which emphasises the boom in tourism, once liberalisation and the free market system can make the problem of numbers disappear. This boom is said to be particularly beneficial for women and first time employment seekers. They talk about infrastructure, open skies and the free flow of money and goods. They never talk about the trafficking in women and young girls from Burma and Yunan to Thailand, from Nepal and the north-east of India to Mumbai and Calcutta, to Japan and Europe as dancers, entertainers and sex workers, as mail order brides or as domestic servants. They also maintain a silence on the packages which offer men with low incomes in Europe and the USA an opportunity to "act like a King" on a sex tour to Asia. Perhaps the greatest cover is still to be lifted on paedophilia, sex tourism that exploits young children, both girls and boys as commodities.
Sex tourism is a purely physical encounter in which the partner is no more than an animated object. Many men choose an Asian girl for such encounters because no verbal communication is possible. All human attributes like name, values, family, history are obliterated to cover up the identity of the girl. The pidgin English/German/French/Japanese conversation through which sex workers in tourist destinations try to establish a relationship only helps to assuage the guilt of the sex tourist who can then feel that the satisfaction of his physical urge is also helping the girl fulfil her economic obligations. For sex tourists, a trip to Asia is an opportunity to have a good time. Sun, sea, sand and sexual services are the backdrop to the definition of a good time. The dehumanising nature of sex tourism is increased if the sexual object is a child. Of the 160 paedophiles and sex tourists arrested up to 1994, 25 per cent were American, 18 per cent German, 14 per cent Australian, 12 per cent British and 6 per cent French. Seven Japanese also feature in the list. Estimates of child prostitutes in...