“Go-Go Pattaya Thailand, Open 24 Hours”, says one of Old Navy’s Summer Destination Tees for Men, now on sale for $8.70. Pattaya, for those who don’t know, is a notorious center for Thailand’s prostitution industry. Many sailors in the US Navy are familiar with it. Salon writes,
Pattaya Beach — which the Toronto Star once called a “cross between Acapulco and Coney Island” — is well known for its ample sexual entertainment. Anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000 child prostitutes work throughout Thailand, according to UNICEF, and 1 million children in Asia are involved in commercial sexual exploitation…
A nonprofit group, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Sexual Purposes USA, or ECPAT-USA, an affiliate of Thailand’s Ecpat International, charges that up to 25 percent of tourists seeking sex with underage persons are American…
[Author Robert Clark] Young contends, some ports the Navy visits seem to exist primarily to cater to the sex trade. He cites Pattaya Beach as a prime example. The Navy can, and often does, stop at other ports — in Hong Kong and Australia — where sailors can find entertainment options other than sex bars and prostitution. But, as Young points out, “there really is no reason for the U.S. Navy to show the flag at Pattaya Beach. The only reason they go to Pattaya Beach is for R&R…”
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women provides a broad survey of prostitution in Thailand:
Ask Old Navy to stop selling its Pattaya T-shirt. Consider refusing to shop there until they do. You can reach Old Navy at 1-800-OLD-NAVY, cu******@ol*****.com, or write to:
Around 80,000 women and children have been sold into Thailand’s sex idustry since 1990, with most coming from Burma, China’s Yunan province and Laos. Trafficked children were also found on construction sites and in sweatshops. In 1996, almost 200,000 foreign children, mostly boys from Burma, Laos and Cambodia, were thought to be working in Thailand. (Mahidol University’s Institute of Population and Social Research, “Trafficking of children on the rise,” Bangkok Post, 22 July 1998)
Pattaya has a multi-billion dollar multinational sex industry with links to drug trafficking, money laundering and an expanding regional cross-border traffic in women. (Mark Baker, “Sin city can’t shake vice’s grip,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 1997)
In Thailand, trafficking is a Bt500 billion annual business, which is 50%-60% of the government’s annual budget and more lucrative than the drug trade. (Authorites and activists, Kulachada Chaipipat, “New law targets human trafficking,” The Nation, 30 Novermber 1997)…
Of the estimated 20,000 prostitutes in Pattaya, hundreds are children who are either lured from their villages by the idea of opportunity or by criminal networks. (Mark Baker, “Sin city can’t shake vice’s grip,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 1997)…
Victims of trafficking from other nations are easily deceived or lured because they face poverty, unemployment, broken families and unstable governments in their own countries. (Sirinya Wattanasukchai, “Flesh trade shrugs off new risks,” The Nation, 1 May 1997)…
Russian women, looking for a better life and to escape the Russian economic crisis, are being trafficked to Pattaya. Most of the women became involved with job placement agencies offering high-paying work as dancers, waitresses, domestic servants or sale representatives. Trafficking networks in Russia charge the women anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 (60,000 to 120,000 baht) and once in Thailand, the women are kept in constant fear. They have their passports taken away upon arrival. The women are forced to work long hours for little pay and threatened with death or the death of their families if they don’t cooperate. (“Pattaya: Murder, prostitution and tourists,” Bangkok Post, 22 April 1998)…
Of 16,423 foreign persons engaged in prostitution in Thailand, 30% are younger than 18. (Mahidol University’s Institute of Population and Social Research, “Trafficking of children on the rise,” Bangkok Post, 22 July 1998)…
Men who use women in prostitution are the largest cause of the spread of AIDS in Thailand. Young boys often have their first sexual experiences in brothels. Grown-up men regularly buy prostitutes. (“Opening our eyes to the Aids problem,” The Nation, 20 May 1997) There are more brothels than schools in Thailand. (CATW – Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)…
The rate of HIV infection is 50% or higher among female prostitutes in Northern Thailand. (New England Journal of Medicine, Sarah McNuaght, “Prohibition,” The Boston Phoenix, 23-30 October 1997)…
Thailand has the fourth largest number of AIDS cases in the world with nearly 60,000. This is only the number of officially reported cases and health workers say the actual number is sveral times higher. (Sutin Wannabovorn, “Thai Prime Minister vows end prostitution, AIDS victims react,” Reuters, 29 July 1997)…
Thailand is now one of the world’s AIDS capitals. The crisis is most severe in the North, where it is recommended that a state of AIDS emergency should be imposed. Suggested strategies include the immediate closure of all brothels in the region because the main route of transmission of AIDS is prostitution. (“Opening our eyes to the Aids problem,” The Nation, 20 May 1997)…
In Pattaya, more than 50 suspected child prostitution tourists have been arrested in the past two years, yet only one case has gone to trial. (Mark Baker, “Sin city can’t shake vice’s grip,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 1997)…
Old Navy Customer Relations
200 Old Navy Lane
Grove City, OH 43123-8605
See also:
The social responsibility policies of Gap Inc., Old Navy’s corporate parent
“To us, being socially responsible means striving to incorporate our values and ethics into everything we do − from how we run our business, to how we treat our employees, to how we impact the communities where we live and work…”
“Today, Gap Foundation focuses charitable giving on supporting underserved children and youth, enabling them to lead healthy and gratifying lives. Additional areas of giving include grants to civic organizations serving the basic needs of our communities, celebration of the arts and long-standing sponsorships of AIDS Walks across the country.”
Gap (PRODUCT) RED
“Can a T-shirt change the world?… Seventy percent of all people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa… With every Gap (PRODUCT) RED purchase, you can help make a difference for Africa.”
Press release: On October 13, [2006,] Gap will introduce Gap (PRODUCT) REDTM – a new, limited collection of clothing and accessories for men and women designed to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. As part of Gap’s global partnership with (PRODUCT) RED, half of the profits from sales of the Gap (PRODUCT) RED Collection will go to The Global Fund to finance programs that help women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa…Letter to the Gazette: “Addressing prostitution, promiscuity in war on AIDS”
“This is such a great way to merge fashion and activism,” said Don Cheadle, actor and activist featured in the new Gap (PRODUCT) RED ad campaign. “Hopefully this campaign will help people educate themselves and get them interested about what’s happening in the world beyond our own borders. I hope that other companies can look to this campaign as an example for what they can do…”
(RED)’s primary objective is to engage the private sector in raising awareness and funds for The Global Fund to help fight AIDS in Africa…
The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a unique global public-private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities represents a new approach to international health financing. The Fund works in close collaboration with other bilateral and multilateral organizations to supplement existing efforts dealing with the three diseases. The Global Fund finances one fifth of all global efforts to stop AIDS and two thirds of global expenditure against tuberculosis and malaria.
Most sex workers in developing nations are more like slaves than they are like the “D.C. Madam”. Trafficking in women is a human rights violation that self-styled progressives like Garrett should oppose. Moreover, heterosexual women in the Third World, who lack the social power to enforce safe-sex guidelines in their relationships, are being infected with AIDS at an alarming rate by husbands who patronize prostitutes.
Sexual Ecology: Porn, Promiscuity, and AIDS (explicit language)
Rotello observes that all infectious diseases are ecological. The human behavioral environment is as important a factor as the biological properties of the virus. Variations in technology and culture explain why the same virus will remain rare in one population but start an epidemic in another. Epidemics depend on the infectivity of the virus, its prevalence in the community, and the rate of contact between the core group of infected people and the general population.
New York Times: “The Girls Next Door”; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn
In Eastern European capitals like Kiev and Moscow, dozens of sex-trafficking rings advertise nanny positions in the United States in local newspapers; others claim to be scouting for models and actresses…
”…[Young women’s] idea of prostitution is ‘Pretty Woman,’ which is one of the most popular films in Ukraine and Russia. They’re thinking, This may not be so bad…”
Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ”The physical path of a person being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person’s mental state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can’t think for herself. Then take away her travel documents, and you’ve made her stateless. Then layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a foreign culture and language, and she’s trapped…”
”There’s a vast misunderstanding of what coercion is, of how little it takes to make someone a slave,” Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission said. ”The destruction of dignity and sense of self, these girls’ sense of resignation…”
D.A. Clarke: Women Adopting Men’s Bad Habits Is Not the Answer
People often talk about the abuses endured by women and children in the sex trade and pornography as the price of a free society, implying that the lives of these people are a tragic but necessary sacrifice if we are to avoid totalitarianism, censorship and so on. My first reaction is always one of stunned outrage – it is so very evident that the people making the sad preachments about necessary sacrifices are never the ones who are being sacrificed, and the freedom about which they have such tender and righteous feelings does not extend to those who are enslaved to ensure it. Then comes a second reaction: What free society? For if the conditions under which the vast majority of prostitutes, and many unpaid sexual servants, live is not fascism, then what is?
Gloria Steinem at Smith: Cooperation, Not Domination
…there are more slaves in proportion to the world’s population–more people held by force or coercion without benefit from their work–more now than there were in the 1800s. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking, children and adults forced into armies: they all add up to a global human-trafficking industry that is more profitable than the arms trade, and second only to the drug trade. The big difference now from the 1800s is that the United Nations estimates that 80% of those who are enslaved are women and children…