Standing outside a harmless-looking two-story terrace house, a middle-aged man with a balding pate and wispy white goatee greets people walking by with a constant refrain.
“You want to see my girl? Come in, come in!” he exhorts every man in sight, pointing to skimpily clad Asian prostitutes waiting in a softly-lit sitting room along a back street in Geylang, Singapore’s red-light district.
The tout says more than 50 customers patronize his business daily.
Photo: AFP
“Our customers are international, anybody can come as long as they can pay,” he says, brushing aside a reporter’s suggestion that the police might not approve of his operation.
“We’re legal!” he scoffs loudly.
Despite its prudish reputation — the government still bans magazines like Playboy and Penthouse — Singapore allows prostitution to thrive in strictly designated areas, and Geylang is the largest and most famous.
Brothels operating out of houses operate in the district alongside budget hotels, sidewalk cafes, community associations and even Buddhist temples.
Despite the presence of legal prostitution, foreign women on short-term visitor passes also ply their trade on the streets and lanes of Geylang, and there seems to be enough business for everyone.
More than a fifth of the city-state’s population of 5 million are foreigners, the majority of them blue-collar and manual workers.
And 1 million tourists a month now visit Singapore thanks to a booming casino industry.
The local sex trade came under the spotlight in June last year when the US Department of State downgraded Singapore in its Trafficking in Persons Report.
The report said some women from China, the Philippines and Thailand were tricked into coming to Singapore with promises of legitimate employment and then coerced into the sex trade after arrival.
Singapore authorities issued an indignant reply, saying their efforts to curb trafficking had not slackened and asked the US government to look at its own immigration record before commenting on other countries’ situations.
In Geylang’s licensed brothels, customers pay an average of S$50 (US$38) for sex inside cramped cubicles, according to operators who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Their primary customers are guest workers from China, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia.
Business is best on weekends when hordes of foreign men on their day off throng its narrow lanes looking for fun.
Like other businesses in Singapore, the sex trade has clear rules.
Brothels can only hire Malaysian, Thai and Chinese girls between the ages of 21 and 27, one tout said.
Prostitutes are also required to make customers wear condoms and report for monthly medical check-ups, he added.
Streetwalker Dan Dan (not her real name) from Beijing said an increased presence of plainclothes police was deterring customers from taking up her US$100 “guaranteed good” service.
Foreign women like Dan Dan who work freelance in the sex trade and bring customers to motel rooms cannot be arrested unless they are caught offering their services out in the street, or violate immigration and other laws.
Local women’s rights activist Braema Mathi advocates protection of prostitutes in Singapore and closer regulation of the industry.
“All we want is for the women to be protected and not judge them for the work that they have decided to take on,” she said.
“We believe that one of the better ways to protect women is to ensure that they work in licensed brothels, where there is a fee structure and condoms,” she said.
With a regulated sex industry, Singapore authorities can turn their attention to women forced into prostitution, she said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not