ေဒါက္တာလြဏ္းေဆြ

Yangon’s Cherry-Sexy Girls
THE GUARDIAN – Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Poverty and corruption drive Myanmar’s child prostitution industry

YANGON — This is a side of life the Myanmar junta might prefer you did not see: Girls who appeared to be 13 and 14 years old paraded in front of customers at a nightclub where a beauty contest thinly veils child prostitution.

Tottering in stiletto heels and mini-skirts, young teenage girls crisscrossed the dance floor as part of a nightly “modelling” show at the Asia Entertainment City nightclub on a recent evening in Yangon.

Watching these young entertainers of the “Cherry-Sexy Girls” model groups were a few male customers, and a far larger crowd of Myanmar sex workers, mostly in their late teens and early 20s, who sat at low tables in the darkness of the club.

Escorting several girls to a nearby table of young men, a waiter said the show was not so much modelling as marketing. “All the models are available,” the waiter said, adding that the youngest girls ask US$100 ($145) to spend a night with a customer, while the older girls and young women in the audience could be bargained down for a lot less.

Prostitution, particularly involving children, is a serious crime in military-ruled Myanmar, but girls taken from the club would have no problem with the authorities, the waiter assured, without explaining why.

It would seem that prostitution is one of the few things the junta — fresh from its recent crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations by Buddhist monks — is still willing to tolerate.

On a recent night in Yangon, a boisterous group of sex workers trawled a hotel bar for customers. Lin Lin, 22, and Thin Thin, 24 — names commonly used by sex workers in Myanmar — said they did not normally work in hotel bars, but the 10pm curfew in the wake of the prodemocracy protests had shut down the late-night clubs and forced them to new venues to find customers.

With a mother, father and young brothers and sisters to support, Lin Lin said that prostitution was not such a difficult choice. “Sometimes I can earn US$40 from one customer,” she explained, speaking in good English.

This was just her night job, she said, adding that she was in her second year at university, studying to become “an advocate of the law”.

Thin Thin said she was a hairdresser during the day, but sleeping with men, particularly foreign
tourists, paid far more than either could earn by legitimate work. With one of the most serious
HIV epidemics in South-east Asia — an estimated 360,000 people in Myanmar were living with HIV at the end of 2005, according to the United Nations — Thin Thin said she took no chances, pulling several condoms from the pocket of her faded jeans.

But just what is shielding the trade in young girls that takes place behind the flimsy facade of “modelling” shows in Yangon from the military regime’s wrath?

The answer is as simple as it is obvious: Money, said Ms Patchareeboon Sakulpitakphon at the Bangkok offices of the international organisation Ecpat, whose acronym stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

“I am sure that (the military) has officials making profit from the growing sex industry and trafficking of Burmese citizens abroad,” she said. “Corruption and the institutionalisation of the sex industry is common.”

According to the UN’s programme on HIV/Aids, and based on available statistics, one in three of Myanmar’s sex workers were infected with HIV in 2005. However, the Ministry of Health’s expenditure on HIV was estimated that year to be around US$137,000, or less than half of US$0.01 a head, the UN said.

Because of the junta’s policies, the country also received a fraction of the international aid given to its neighbours. “Overall, overseas development assistance per capita in 2004 for Myanmar was US$2.40, compared with US$22 in Vietnam, US$35 in Cambodia and US$47 in Lao People’s Democratic Republic.”

And with an estimated annual income of just US$220 a head among Myanmar’s 52 million people, fleeing the country to work elsewhere is all too common. For many, their effort to escape leads them into the hands of human traffickers and the sex trade in Thailand, China, Malaysia, Macau and elsewhere, according to the United States’ State Department.