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Sex slaves: trafficking of women in Asia

Chapter One: The Market, part 1

Part 1: 1: victims - 2: Asian mentality - 3: prostitution systems - 4: industrialization, World Wars and Vietnam War - 5: sex tourism Thailand Philippines - 6: secret brothels for Asian men


Brothel prison in Mumbai with a brothel prison boss (mama-san) and the slaves in the background [7]

by Louise Brown; edition Virago (2000)

presented and with subtitles by Michael  Palomino (2013)

[The map]

[Be aware of the map in Asia when you are not a star in Geography. The book speaks about Asia from Pakistan to Japan with almost all countries between these two countries]:

Map of Central and East Asia [1] from the left to the right: in a first unit there is women trade between Pakistan - India - Nepal - Bangladesh; the second package: Burma - China - Thailand - Cambodia - Laos - Vietnam - Malaysia - Indonesia; and the third package: Thailand - Philippines - Japan.


Map with Asia, Pacific Ocean and "America" [2]: In rare cases prostitutes are also brought from Asia to the "U.S.A.", or from Columbia to Japan.

1.1: Examples of victims of woman trafficking

Example: Nepali girl of 12 years sold to India - with 19 with AIDS is going to die

I met Sahana when she was nineteen years old. She was an illiterate Nepali woman who possessed two valuable qualities: she was young and she was pretty. Her face earned her family the equivalent of fifty pounds when she was sold, aged twelve, to a brothel in India. It also earned her ten customers a day and HIV. She no longer works as a prostitute. This is not because she has been rescued from prostitution, or because she has found a happier livelihood, but because she is going to die. She was ejected from her caged brothel in Mumbai because she had become too thin to attract the clients, and the brothel owner thought she was a bad advertisement for business.

Map with India, Nepal and Bangladesh indicating girl and women trade to Mumbai and Pakistan [3]

General indications: Brothels in Asia are often prisons and girls have no chance of flight

Stories like Sahana's have become clichés. But, staggeringly, even clichés like these can still be true. All over the world women are sold, tricked, forced or lured into prostitution. They are incarcerated in brothels and girls who are little more than children are compelled to service innumerable clients. They are unable to refuse the customers and unable to escape from brothels that are nothing but prisons.

These tales are not myths or figments in the imagination of (p.1)

journalists looking for new angles on an old story. They are ancient horror stories, and they are contemporary ones too, shared by hundreds of thousands of girls and young women.

General indications: sex slaves in Asia also in the 1990s - and men do not protest - reality of exploitation of women is very brute

These women are modern-day sex slaves - and Asia, in particular, has far more than its fair share of them. Perhaps this is only to be expected. It should come as no surprise that societies that practice female infanticide, that have millions of 'missing' women, that have 'dying rooms' in orphanages for unwanted daughters, and that systematically discriminate against females should also sell girls and young women for sex. The question that produces far more surprising answers is: who is buying them?

Research on the trafficking of women and systems of sexual slavery in Asia is a revelation because it gives a stark insight into the real workings of a society. The view from the barred window of a closed brothel is very different from the sunny picture of happily regulated sexuality that is commonly described by the spokespersons of Asian societies.

Trafficking: Nepal exporting girls: 'poor, rural, powerless and silent'

At the beginning of the 1990s I lived with my family in Nepal. During the two years I spent in the beautiful Kathmandu Valley I had some vague awareness of the migration and export of Nepali girls to north Indian brothels. It was one of Nepal's many dreadful social problems and was considered a by-product of the country's appalling poverty. Like most other people in the circles in which I mixed, I thought it was a relatively minor issue. In hindsight, these views must have been colored by the fact that the girls and women involved were poor, rural, powerless and silent.

They were ignored because they were unimportant in the busy world of Kathmandu's political elites. Eight years on, and after interviewing dozens of Nepali women involved in sex work, I have changed my mind about the significance and the importance of these women's lives.

Poverty in Nepal in stone age [4] This government in Nepal is absolutely corrupt and criminal leaving a big part of it's population in absolute poverty without education, social networks or institutions. There would be so much tourism possible in Nepal but the chances are not used, but girls are exported to Mumbai systematically.	Map of Nepal with Kathmandu on 1355 meters and mountain ranges with 6,000 to 7,000 meters [5]

Trafficking: Bad treatment of Nepali women in India and Thai / Filipina women in Japan

Back in England I began to teach Japanese history and politics at the University of Birmingham. Despite the vast differences between the levels of economic development in Nepal and Japan, I gradually (p.2)

became aware that the two countries shared some similar but discreet patterns. In particular, Japan has an image of an impeccably clean and ordered society. So why were there reports, tucked away in the press, of Thai and Filipina women who had suffered grievous harm at the hands of the Japanese sex industry? And why did their stories bear such striking similarity to the stories of Nepali women in Indian brothels?

Map showing prostitutes from Thailand and the Philippines working in brothels in Japan for Japanese men [6]

Eventually it made a kind of sense. The stories were the same because trafficking and prostitution are part of a vast and global industry. And in Asia this industry is just about as vigorous  - and as hidden - as you can possibly find.

General indications: Europe and 'America' have open sex business - Asia has secret and hidden sex business

Commercial sex is widespread in Asia. In fact, it is probably even more common than in the West. The difference is that it is a very, very quiet business. The West has highly visible sex industries, Female sexuality is used to sell virtually all products, and sex is bought on the streets, in brothels, in massage parlors, in clubs and through advertisements. Asia has a similar phenomenon, but you have to be an Asian man to know where to look for it. That is why it is hard to write about the sale of sex in the region. It is also why it is important for the rest of the world to listen to the experiences of women who sell sex, and to the experiences of women who are sold for sexual recreation in Asia. It is especially important when the consumers of these young women and girls are men who are supposed to be too morally upstanding to be buying the product in the first instance.

Trafficking: Sold women: from poor families - from poor communities - women of minorities - and arrogant rich and discriminations

The people who endure the grossest forms of commercial sexual abuse throughout the world are those who are at the bottom of lots of different, and very complicated, hierarchies. They are female, they are from poor families in poor communities, and they belong to despised racial and ethnic minorities. They are abused and exploited, and a proportion are locked into sexual slavery precisely, and simply, because they can be: they are society's most vulnerable people.

In Asia there is plenty of opportunity for the creation and maintenance (p.3)

of systems of sexual slavery because there are such massive differences between the rich and the poor and because Asia is the grim home to some of the worst gender discrimination on earth.

Well developed trafficking networks for sex slavery - and not justified good reputation of Asian men

The trafficking of women for prostitution is a global phenomenon and so it might appear unfair to single out Asia for specific criticism. Research on prostitution in the former Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and in Latin American would probably yield broadly similar results. Female sexual slavery is found everywhere. Asia, however, is worthy of special attention because it is here that the industry and trafficking networks are most sophisticated and well developed. Ironically - and astonishingly - it is also a part of the world in which the local men are thought not to buy sex.


1.2: Some general indications about Asian mentality

Child prostitution: Offers of child prostitution - only a little part is for European criminal pedophiles - the big majority is for Asian men - Asian men like mostly girls as an amusement - high rated virgins for Asian customers

In addition, Asia, along with South and Central America, is a region in which the scandal of child prostitution is acute. And this cannot simply be because Western [criminal] pedophiles visit Asian countries to buy sex with children. There are so many child prostitutes in Asia that the demand for their services must also be coming from another, far more important quarter [for Japanese men, as you can see later].

Evidence from organizations working with prostitutes indicates that the average age of sex workers in Asia has been falling in the past decade. In large parts of the region prostitutes begin selling sex when they are children. The sex industry likes cheap and compliant staff and the customers prefer disease-free teenagers. The most disturbing aspect of the sex business that I encountered, and the hardest to accept, was the fact that when Asian men buy sex they seem to prefer to buy girls and not women. The premium age for prostitutes in Asia is between thirteen and sixteen. Virgin girls are in greatest demand and the price that the customers are willing to pay for them is very, very high. As I interviewed former child prostitutes in South Asia, I was acutely aware that these girls had begun work at around, or even before, the age of puberty [and Asian governments are blind for this and blame always the Europeans].

Asia-bashing has become something of a sport in the West in the past three or four years. The 1997 Asian economic crisis provided (p.4)

Western critics with an antidote to the wearisome and worrying success of Asian economies, and more than a few observers were smug that Asia's economic invincibility and the superiority of its economic models had proved to be myths. Asian economies are recovering well from the financial crisis but there are other, even greater, myths about Asia which need to be challenged.

The two codes in Asia: The official character of Asian society - and the secret drive for sex in the secret brothel

Asia is commonly portrayed as the home of wholesome family values and conservative sexual morality. This would be hilarious if its impact upon women, and particularly prostituted women, was not so devastating. A fashionable debate emerged a few years ago about the importance of "Asian values" in the success of South-East and East Asian economies. Although this debate was never wholly convincing, especially as Asia is so diverse, a core set of values was identified as "Asian". These included
-- the attachment of an individual to his or her family;
-- respect for authority;
-- the importance of education and thrift;
-- deference to established social structures; and
-- adherence to conservative social and sexual codes.

While studying the Asian sex industry I began to think that some important things might have been missing from this list. Perhaps we also need to add
-- hypocrisy and
-- men's contempt for women.

[In reality Asian women are selling girls and organizing most of brothel prisons - as one can see from chapter 5 on].

Asian culture does not speak about sexual problems - does not want to see sexual problems - slave situation is considered as "normal"

I do not wish to depict the West as a great model of social and sexual morality. Analysis of Asian men's prostitute use is not intended to glorify Western sexual and social ethics. All societies have their problems and European and North American societies have just as many, if not more, than anywhere else. But the violence, the social decay and the inescapable world of commercial sex in Western societies are on show for the entire world to see. They can be criticized and damned. Asian societies, however, hide their problems away. In fact they are not even acknowledged as problems.

I have sat through too many work-related meetings and attended too many social functions in which educated Asian men have flatly denied that there is any incidence of prostitution in their own societies. They should be more honest. Vice, we are told, is the (p.5)

preserve of the decadent West and Asia has a superior moral and sexual code. This message should be sent to the sex slaves of Asia's closed brothels to debate. Unfortunately no one is likely to let them out in order for them to receive it. That, precisely, is the point.

Asian moral for family is high - and also Asian moral for secret brothels for the father

All societies moralize. And we should be aware by now that what is portrayed in public discourse as normal sexual conduct is often very different from what people actually do in private. From a Western perspective there seems to be a vast gulf between Asian societies' emphasis upon the family and the reality of men's sexual practices. This gulf between theory and practice can be explained, in part, by the fact that we are not comparing the same thing. The rather vague concept of 'family values' will inevitably vary within different cultural contexts. In Western societies there is an assumption that fidelity is a requirement of marriage. Most classes within most Asian societies, on the other hand, do not make this assumption - at least not in practice. In this respect there is no hypocrisy in the Asian family values system. Men hold family values very dearly but in an Asian setting family values mean stability of the family unit. They mean that the family sticks together and that divorces are frowned upon. Yet the size of the sex industry suggests that those same values do not necessarily require that a husband mus be faithful to his wife. In this case the only hypocrisy lies in the farcical assertion that Asian men uniformly adhere to a conservative sexual code that stresses fidelity and virtue.

Brothel prison in Mumbai with a brothel prison boss (mama-san) and the slaves in the background [7]

Asian moral permits fathers sex with other women - but does not permit the mothers sex with other men

In most Asian societies sex and the family are two almost wholly separate facets of a man's life. Marriage, reproduction and the family are economic and social contracts. Sex is an obligation within this contract but it is not something that necessarily has to be good, or to be enjoyed, or to be consistently practiced - although, of course, it helps. Sex is a recreation, a sport which men - and only men - can legitimately pursue outside the confines of the marriage bed. Adventures with mistresses and frequent tumbles with prostitutes are accommodated within this framework firstly because wives are (p.6)

not really threatened by their husband's alliances. After all, sex is not what their marriage is all about.

[This is because Asian women are not telling about vagina inflammations and is not knowing anything about lubrications and oils for a better sex at home but Asian women are secretly suffering not telling anything about their vagina inflammations and the husband is sent to the brothel - one can see from chapter 5 on].

Women hardly have civil rights in Asia - Asian men profit from women without rights

Secondly, there is absolutely nothing a wife can do if she objects to her husband's behavior. In other words men can buy sex because they can get away with it. Finally, there is a pool of women to indulge these men in their sexual sports. Some of these women are willing and, if there are not enough young women who are willing to sell their bodies, then the sex industry can be guaranteed to furnish some unwilling ones too. For most of the customers the difference is unnoticed and sometimes unappreciated. For some it is a positive stimulant.

Stigmatized women in brothels without any rights - working for Asian fathers getting their secret pleasure

The prostitutes that these men enjoy are stigmatized women. This is especially true in South Asia. Time after time sex workers refer to themselves as being 'outside society'. And they are right - they are despised outcasted. Yet, paradoxically, far from being outside society they are at its very core. They are not peripheral to the social system because they are vital to its functioning. We can learn a lot about the structure of a society from analyzing prostitution. In the Asian case, we might have good cause to think that family values and prostitution are just opposite sides of exactly the same coin.


1.3: Examples of prostitution systems in Asia

Chinese women serving sex for Chinese workers in Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, and 'USA'

Today's Asian sex industry has been built on some solid and very nasty foundations. Women have traditionally been a commodity to be exchanged, and in the nineteenth century the commodity acquired a market value in rapidly commercializing Asian economies. The first large-scale commercial trafficking involved Chinese women who were sold to brothels in Malaya, Singapore and modern-day Thailand in order to provide sexual services to single or unaccompanied Chinese male migrant laborers. Women were also sent as far as the United States for the same purpose.

Map showing Chinese migrant workers followed by Chinese prostitutes working in Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, and "U.S.A." [8]

Japan first exported prostitutes - now imports prostitutes
In the 1880s impoverished Japanese girls known as "karayuki-san" were exported to South-east Asia to provide sexual services. Now it is the second largest economy in the world, Japan does not need to export its women. Instead, it has reversed the flow and imports poor women from other countries (p.7).

Sex slave system in Japan during Second World War: 'Comfort women' with up to 70 customers per day

The most well-publicized antecedent of modern-day sexual slavery in the region is Japan's forced recruitment of over 100,000 girls and women during the Second World War. These girls, most of whom were Korean [Korea was Japanese territory in those times], are known euphemistically as the 'Comfort Women' and they were rounded up for use as prostitutes in military brothels [footnote 1].

[Footnote 1] The best account of this dismal episode is George Hicks: The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). For disturbing first-hand accounts by the women themselves see: Keith Howard (ed): True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women (New York: Cassell, 1995).

Most were teenagers and young women when they were recruited. Many never made it into full adulthood. They served up to seventy soldiers a day who stood in lines outside the girls' rooms. The demand was so great that some of the girls did not even have a chance to move off their beds. Unsurprisingly, many died, committed suicide or were killed by the Japanese when it was apparent that they would lose the war. Those that survived were too traumatized and shamed by their experiences to even mention this war crime until a handful of elderly survivors gathered the courage to speak out over forty years after the event. Perhaps most significantly of all, this vile episode was condoned, and even orchestrated, by the Japanese Imperial Army.

	Yoshimi Yoshiaki. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. Translated by Suzanne O'Brien (2000) [9] “An incisive and important book by a leading researcher on this extremely controversial topic." —John W. Dower, M.I.T.

1.4: The development of sex industry in Asia with industrialization, World Wars and Vietnam war

Development of sex industry in Asia: industrialization spreading people and money

Asia's sex industry went from strength to strength after the war. Three things were absolutely crucial to its development:

-- First, and most important, was the region's economic development. Mass prostitution did not really exist in traditional Asia. The region was rural, feudal and poor. Women were chattels and were sexually exploited but this usually took the form of concubinage or the landlords' sexual access to local peasant girls. This began to change during the colonial period and, after the Second World War, it altered more dramatically. Parts of the region, particularly in East and South-east Asia, became more affluent. The pace of urbanization and industrialization increased and large numbers of people left their villages and migrated to the cities. A few women began to earn money in growth industries - but a greater number of men earned far more. A significant proportion of these relatively affluent men spent their money on the purchase of sex. The sexual access to women that had previously been enjoyed by the powerful now came (p.8)

within the reach of large numbers of men, and they took maximum advantage of this new and exciting opportunity.

World Wars and Vietnam War breaking the limits - fucken Amis in Thailand, Korea and Philippines fucking around with hard "US" dollars - and Asian women fucking the fucken Amis getting the hard dollars

-- The second spur to the industry was the expansion of military prostitution. Prostitutes have commonly been available to service troops and their officers. They accompanied armies when they went to war and red light areas thrived outside the walls of virtually every major garrison and fort in traditional Asia. Many of these brothel quarters linger on even today. But what gave military prostitution in Asia a real boost was the arrival of high-spending American troops during the Korean and especially Vietnam Wars. During the 1960s and early 1970s United States servicemen posted to Vietnam traveled to Thailand for R&R, or Rest and Recreation. More accurately, this was referred to as I&I, or Intercourse and Intoxication. A vast and lucrative sector of the sex industry thrived by providing sexual services to military personnel. Similar industries developed wherever US troops were based. In Korea brothel towns sprang up next to bases. The same happened in the Philippines, where thousands of women provided sexual recreation to men stationed in US military bases and to sailors from the visiting US naval fleet [footnote 2].

Map with Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Korea [10] showing the Vietnam War system of criminal "U.S.A." giving the soldiers an R&R holiday in Thailand, Philippines and in Korea, changing between sex tourism and war killing action - or being heavily injured or even being killed

[Footnote 2] A number of excellent books have been written on military prostitution in Asia. Among the best and most easily available are
-- Saundra Pollock Sturdevant and Brenda Stoltzfus: Let the Good Times Roll: Prostitution and the US Military in Asia (New York: The New Press, 1992), and:
-- Katharine H.S. Moon: Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in US-Korea Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

Thai policy: Thai sex industry after Vietnam War had to survive! Tourists with hard currency should come to Thailand for fucking!

When the US pulled out of Vietnam the Thai sex industry faced a worrying cut in profits. A rescue package was, nevertheless, close at hand. The sex business, in unofficial partnership with the tourist industry and the government, decided to diversify and to attract a new type of client. Tourists would replace military personnel. Consumers were sought from the developed nations of the West, and also from Japan. These consumers provided the third stimulus to the industry. They listened to the message and they liked what they heard: young, beautiful, submissive, sexy and cheap Thai girls were desperate to cater to the unfulfilled needs of men who deserved better treatment than that meted out by aggressive, demanding and unfeminine Western women. The advertising worked and the customers arrived in their millions [footnote 3].

Public bar street in Phuket, Thailand, for a "happy night" for tourists [11], but in reality it is only a "happy night" for the money bag of the prostitute

[Footnote 3] Numerous and often indistinguishable articles have been written on the sex tourist trade. Among the best and most important books are
-- Thanh-Dam Truong: Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South-East Asia (London: Zed Books, 1990)
-- Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson: Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle (London: Routledge, 1998), and
Jeremy Seabrook: Travels in the Skin Trade: Tourism and the Sex Industry (London: Pluto Press, 1996).

(p.9)

[Reality about Thai prostitutes: tricky, many alcoholics, no caressing, and they don't know much about sex
The description of Thai women as "young, beautiful, submissive, sexy and cheap" is not true because globalization is giving much information to Thai women nowadays how to trick men and how to suck the money out of his pocket without much service. Mafia in Thailand is doing the rest leading the women to a bad behavior. Additionally many Thai prostitutes are alcoholics and loose their brain and are not at all good for conversation, and they also loose their soft feminine voice. And they hardly speak English but a sort of "Tinglish", broken English, or even no English, but only two languages: sex and getting money, that's it. Most Thai prostitutes have also no idea of good sex but know nothing about sex but to lay passively in the bed. And caressing somebody is a taboo in Thailand, but beating somebody is a well spread familiar custom in the Thai countryside and so many not educated prostitutes in Thailand are beating their customers spreading an ugly atmosphere copying the behavior or their Thai mothers. According to sexual taboos and alcoholism this counts also for other Asian countries because the taboos and the alcohol problem are the same. Sex life in Asia is absolutely boring and western women know much more].

Western men in Thailand and Philippines - analysis: imagination of a special event not 'just for the money'

The Western media fasten upon sex tourism as if it is only inadequate and perverted Western men who are responsible for the sexual exploitation of Asian women. Certainly Western men flock in their millions to purchase Thai and Filipina sex workers. I spent an educational few weeks observing my fellow countrymen and their Western peers at play in the sex tourist destinations of Thailand and the Philippines. Contrary to the image of the sex tourist as a middle-aged or elderly pervert, the men escorting beautiful young women in Pattaya, Bangkok and Angeles were drawn from a whole spectrum of Western males. These men are our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.

Western sex tourism is very different from the domestic Asian sex market. It is also different from Japanese sex tourism. Western sex consumers like to think there is choice in the sex for money transaction. They like to see the product - and plenty of it - before they buy. They like to pretend that a pretty nineteen-year-old girl really did 'connect' with them. They like to imagine that she did not do it 'just for the money'; that she enjoyed their time together; that they had something special, which trivial things like a vast age gap and large income differentials simply could not spoil.


1.5: Examples of sex tourism in Thailand in in the Philippines

Thailand: Pattaya in the 1990s

In order for the customers to believe that there is choice in the deal, and that there is an element of mutual attraction in addition to the cash, the whole business has to appear open and informal and bags of fun. Western sex tourism is therefore outrageously visible. Tourists stroll arm-in-arm with teenagers around the streets of what, in effect, are giant open-air brothels. They visit clubs with subtle names like 'The Pussy Bar' or 'The Hot Girl Club'. Pattaya in Thailand is crammed with hundreds of bars and clubs in which Western men can buy young women. The sex business is incredibly blatant. Virtually everyone tries to sell you sex. Men who do not want to buy sex, and who are clearly with partners, are propositioned dozens of times every evening. Even the minibars in the hotel rooms are supplied with drinks, snacks and a selection of condoms (p.10).

The happy holidaymakers drool over erotic dancers in bars. They can be found having oral sex in the darkened corners of clubs; they give detailed gynaecological examinations to the women who provide floor shows; and they can be seen emerging from hotel rooms with girls young enough to be their granddaughters.

Pattaya, Walking Street with public bars, Thailand - with a file of prostitutes making offers for tourists, 2011 [12]

Philippines: Angeles with auctions and European racist customers

One evening in a club in Angeles in the Philippines, I watched three men inspect half a dozen very nervous, teenage sex workers as if they were cattle at an auction. They gave the girls a manual check to asses the size of their breasts. They then paid the club owner for the girls' services and departed with their merchandise. A few hours later I saw them, riotously and unpleasantly drunk, in another bar where they were tutoring their purchases in coarse football anthems and racist chants that were clearly directed at the girls themselves.

[Well, here the author Louise Brown seems to be absolutely unilateral never mentioning any positive example of the behavior to the young women. Mrs. Louise Brown is telling NOTHING ABOUT ONE SINGLE POSITIVE EXAMPLE, and this leads to the conclusion that Mrs. Louise Brown has also a big problem with men].

Angeles in the Philippines, public Angelwitch bar with a file of prostitutes making offers for tourists [13]

[So, this is the official part of sex business with some examples ob public bars where the woman can chose the customer herself. And now comes the essential point, the hidden brothel prisons with sex slavery where the woman brothel boss decides which and how many customers a girl has per day]:

Asian men in Asian brothels: "The major demand for commercial sex in Asia comes from the domestic market" - in secret brothels

You will rarely - if ever - see a local Asian man participating in this kind of [public] commercial sex market. The visibility of the Western men's preferred form of purchased sexual encounter, however, is distorting because the sex tourists monopolize our field of vision and attract all of our condemnation. What this does is to obscure other, even more crucial, consumers from view. There is a vast amount of money to be made from Western sex tourism but the major demand for commercial sex in Asia comes from the domestic market. Most Asian prostitutes sell sex to Asian men. By comparison, the number of Western clients pales into insignificance, although these men are important because, on average, they pay far more. The sex tourism business grew from, and now grows along-side, the indigenous sex trade.

The Asian version of commercial sex is very different from the Western sex tourist scene. So an observer who looks for local Asian men crowding into go-go bars and the kind of Thai club that offers banana, 'smoking pussy', ping pong and razor blade shows will look long and hard - and without success. Asian men buy sex in a different kind of setting and in a different location. Often it is in areas catering specifically - and exclusively - to Asian men, and sometimes (p.11)

it is behind closed doors. Those people who have been looking for evidence of a local Asian sex market have been looking in the wrong place.

Secret brothel in Mumbai in India, example of a hideout [14]

Secret brothel in Mumbai in India, prostitutes protecting their face [15]

1.6: Examples of secret brothels for local Asian men with girls and women as sex slaves

[There is a harsh racism of Asian men against white men from Europe, "America" and Australia. Asian society is protecting all in secret houses]:

Example of a secret brothel in Manila for Filipino men - big room in the background - men leaving with the dancers in the cars

Sex tourism is inescapable in the Philippines. And so is the commercial sex market patronized by local men - providing you know where to go. Manila and Angeles are crowded with sex clubs catering to foreigners. They have neon lights, loud music and semi-naked women hanging around the doorway. It is much harder to see where Filipino men buy sex. In Manila, I visited a club catering to lower-middle-class and better-off working-class men. The clients were drivers, clerks and small-scale businessmen. From the outside the club looked completely innocuous. There were no indications that sex was sold inside this establishment - at least none that was clearly visible to a Western women, even one who was fairly clued up on the commercial sex scene. From the external appearance of this club it looked remarkably like a large Mediterranean holiday-style disco. We paid our entrance fee to a couple of confused youths and entered a barn-like room that was filled with rows of tables and chairs. A small and incompetent band played to an audience of three extremely bored spectators who clapped whenever they were prompted.

We were ushered through a side door and walked down a long, narrow and poorly lit corridor. Then, to my surprise, we entered a large room that was so crowded that the waiter struggled to find us a table. The contrast with the empty, and very public, front of the club could not have been more dramatic. In the middle of this busy room was a small stage about three feet off the ground and surrounded by tables. At ten-minute intervals a couple of girls walked through the throng of men and danced on the stage. The braver ones undressed and the others performed a stiff and unconvincingly erotic shuffle while holding onto as many items of clothing as they could possibly manage. The vast majority of men ignored these shufflings and concentrated on talking to their friends while (p.12)

drinking copious quantities of beer. Every now and again one of the customers would get up, leave the table and follow the women to the dressing rooms. They did not return. Later a stream of men could be seen driving away from the dark car park at the back of the  building with the young dancers in their cars.

Example of a secret brothel in Manila for Filipino men: hidden and slave brothels called "casa" - entry only from friend to friend - the taxi driver know

This club is a Western-style venue for the local men but there is another even more authentically local variety of sex establishment. It is called a casa and it is a closed brothel. In other words, the women cannot escape. Identifying casas is troublesome because they are hidden. They do not have signs, and new customers are introduced by regular clients. Gaining entry to some of these places is rather like gaining membership to an exclusive club.

Taxi drivers everywhere have a wealth of information about brothels, and Filipino taxi drivers are experts on casas. One particularly well-informed driver took me to a house in Manila that he insisted was a casa catering to rich men. It was a large, modern, multi-storey building in its own grounds and was surrounded by fences. Its windows were of darkened glass and it had no apparent purpose. It was the most unlikely brothel. The driver was so insistent that it was a casa - and I was so disbelieving - that I agreed to observe the building at night. Sure enough, he was right. Every evening men arrived in expensive cars and parked in an underground car park. They then stayed for a couple of hours and left as quietly as they had arrived. In contrast to the constant movement of men, I never saw any young woman enter or leave the building.

Asia: many states declaring prostitution "illegal" - and women have no rights - and foreigners are forbidden - example Japan with women without rights

Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and we find the same kind of dissembling happening in other countries in which sex for sale is prohibited. Japanese brothels are not advertised as brothels but all the locals know what they are. Men talk about them and they visit them. Women know about them, but do not mention their existence. The subject is not one that is officially recognized. Commercial sex is both a joke among men and a subject that is not fit for discussion in polite society. Signs on the clubs in Tokyo that (p.13)

entertain Japanese men make the message quite clear. They say 'NO FOREIGNERS'. Clearly, Japan has a reputation to protect.

Pakistan declaring prostitution "illegal" - and secret brothels from "friend" to "friend"

A similar phenomenon is found in Pakistan's sex sector. Brothels are not brothels. Instead they are 'dancing schools' or they are apartments and houses in respectable suburbs. Few people will tell you otherwise because there is a conspiracy of silence. New customers are introduced by trusted, existing clients. These men are guaranteed not to give the game away.

And wives can also be guaranteed not to complain. They have no option.  They also visit prostitutes. Their wives have no choice other than to accept this behavior because the only alternative is a socially and financially disastrous divorce. A husband irritated by a nagging wife may even decide to bring yet another wife home. Less affluent men may not be able to afford mistresses but they still might visit sex workers. The bitter unhappiness of the wives of poorer men, however, will not be tempered by gifts of jewelry and beautiful clothes.

Pakistan: arrangements for sex in the waiting room of hospitals

In sexually repressive societies the most unlikely places become the venue for selling sex. In Pakistan, for example, favorite spots include the waiting rooms of hospitals because these are places where women can legitimately visit. Or there are particular stretches of road - especially the ones with traffic lights to stop the cars and a few bushes for the sake of discretion.

Pakistan: the secret brothel - and girls and women hardly can get out - and they don't speak

It is impossible for the uninitiated to identify a Pakistani brothel. They look like ordinary houses in ordinary streets. I was taken round and round residential districts in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi that were filled with brothels.

Map of Pakistan with the towns Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi [16]

Yet, until I was told, I could not identify which buildings were brothels and which were family homes. Many guest houses and small hotels are brothels - but you have to be told this to know about it, and you have to be part of a local, inner circle in order to enjoy the services offered. The girls and young women inside these places cannot speak about what happens withing their walls because some cannot get out. And those who can leave will not speak about selling sex (p.14)

because to do so would amount to social and, in some cases, physical suicide.

India and Bangladesh: brothel sectors in certain cities since centuries

India is a little more relaxed about commercial sex but, even so, the sex sector is still nowhere near as apparent as in the West. This does not mean, however, that it is smaller in size or importance than its Western counterpart. Quite the reverse. A visitor to India will not see an extensive sex sector if they look for pornography among the magazines and newspapers that are sold in the street and in the shops. Indian women dress with discretion and Indian cinema is unhealthily chaste. But a visit to places like Sonagachi in Calcutta, Kamatipura in Mumbai (Bombay) and GB Road in Delhi will quickly demolish the amusing proposition that Indian men do not buy sex. There are not many sex tourists in places like these.

Calcutta, Sonagachi District, prostitutes in a file, probably enslaved young women [17]

Today India's traditional red light areas cater to ordinary men - just as they have done for centuries. A traditional urban brothel in India, and also in Bangladesh, is not a single building but a whole sub-sector of the city in which there are many sex establishments. Brothels in old urban centers are a warren of dark, often unpaved, winding lanes and alleys in which hundreds and sometimes thousands of women sell sex.

India and Bangladesh: brothels in big multistoreyed buildings - not attractive - not cleaned - with slave women

There are usually many large, multistoreyed and decrepit buildings each divided into separate, and competing, brothels. In turn, these brothels are divided into lots of tiny cramped rooms in which two, three or more prostitutes work. There is nothing glamorous about these places. There is little that can be described as erotic in the rat-infested, overcrowded and unsanitary rooms in which the women work. Places like these are the home to a large proportion of Asia's sex slaves (p.15).

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Photo sources
[1] map of Asia: http://www.wpmap.org/category/asia-maps/page/2/
[2] map with Asia, Pacific and "America: http://www.danieldagan.com/?p=12445
[3] map of India, Nepal and Bangladesh: http://www.vidiani.com/?p=3530
[4] Nepal poverty with stone age: http://www.hotelnepal.com/nepal/program.php?pro_id=50
[5] Nepal, map: http://www.ezilon.com/maps/asia/nepal-physical-maps.html
[6] map with Asia, Pacific and "America: http://www.danieldagan.com/?p=12445
[7] Mumbai, brothel prison with mama-san and slaves: http://thirdworldorphans.org/gpage32.html
[8] map with Asia, Pacific and "America: http://www.danieldagan.com/?p=12445
[9] book "Comfort Women": http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/asia-perspectives.html
[10] Map with Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Korea: http://geology.com/world/asia-satellite-image.shtml

[11] bar street in Phuket, Thailand, with sex tourism: http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/46426/
[12] Pattaya, Walking Street, Thailand, with file of prostitutes:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_11653838_pattaya-thailand--november-27-nightlife-on-walking-street-commonly-known-as-a-place-that-offers-plen.html
[13] Angeles in the Philippines, Angelwitch bar with a file of prostitutes: http://www.balibago.org/balibago_bars/Angelwitch_Bar.php
[14] prostitute in secret brothel in a hideout: Sexual slavery and enforced prostitution in India: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1sTRMJQmho
[15] prostitutes in secret brothel protecting their face: Sexual slavery and enforced prostitution in India: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1sTRMJQmho
[16] map with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan: http://www.mapsofindia.com/neighbouring-countries-maps/india-pakistan-map.html
[17] Calcutta, Sonagachi, prostitutes in a file: sdewsdfdffd.blogspot.com/2011/10/sonagachi-22-8066-views.html

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