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Tourism whose sole aim is the exploitation of children is so out in the open that a new organization has sprung up to combat it: ECPAT, or End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism. Founded three years ago by three Asia-based Christian groups, ECPAT now has offices in 14 nations -- there are four in the U.S. -- and extensive links with religious and social organizations around the world dedicated to fighting child prostitution. Pressure by ECPAT and groups like it have already had some impact; in 1992 the Philippine government adopted a Child Protection Code to guard against child abuse. And Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai has announced a campaign to wipe out child prostitution.
But few expect much to come of such efforts. Rather, attempts to suppress the trade have shifted to the First World nations that supply the clients. "We live in a world of contradictions, lies and cowardice," says Francois Lefort, a French priest and doctor who has fought child prostitution throughout the world. "This problem is not just Bangkok's, Colombo's, Manila's. It's Paris', Brussels', Rome's. It's the nice, respectable white man who goes down there to molest these kids."
Officials have recently taken the point to heart. In Australia the government has declared war on illicit sex tourism, and the federal police have been targeting travel agencies catering to pedophiles. Germany is expected to pass a law by the end of the summer that for the first time would make patrons of foreign child prostitutes violators of German law, as is already the case in France and the Scandinavian countries. "Sexual abuse of children is a crime, worldwide, and will be prosecuted by criminal law," warned German Bundestag President Rita Sussmuth in an address opening a May ECPAT conference in Stuttgart.
In Britain 153 members of Parliament so far have signed a motion introduced in January asking Thailand to take action to stamp out sex tourism. "The Thai government has come down hard on foreigners who try to smuggle drugs into the country," M.P. Nigel Evans told the House of Commons. "I only wish that they would come down equally hard on foreigners visiting Thailand to prey on the children of that country." Britons are apparently well represented among such % visitors. In 1991 83% of all British tourists to the Philippines, and 80% of all visitors to the Philippines, were men.
One effective fighter against sexploitation of children is the Task Force to End Child Exploitation in Thailand, a coalition of 24 government and private agencies dedicated to exposing links between Europe and the child sex trade in Bangkok. Last year the group disclosed the existence of a Swiss network of airline-ticket agencies catering to European pedophiles; one was shut down. Then last August the task force focused on Lauda Air, the Austrian-based airline owned by former auto-racing champ Niki Lauda, for running a caricature in its in-flight magazine that allegedly promoted child sex tourism.