Mon, Apr 08, 2002 page19

• Thailand's notorious nightlife loses its swing to morals campaign

  • AP
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  It's midnight on Soi Cowboy, one of this city's notorious flesh strips, and for the bikini-clad young women who work the neon-lit bars, business is tough.

  In less than two hours drinkers will be told to leave, the bar doors must be shuttered, and hundreds of sex workers will be cast out onto the streets where many will ply their trade until dawn.

  A stream of men ogle the spectacle, but police vigorously enforcing Thailand's "social order" crackdown are also on the prowl, poking their heads through the beaded curtains as dancers rush to cover up.

  

  Thai prostitutes stand in front of a bar waiting for customers as a tourist walks by in one of Bangkok's downtown redlight districts.

  PHOTO: AFP

  By 2:15am, the alley is empty, a far cry from the scenes less than a year ago when locals and tourists partied until dawn.

  "Of course business is bad," said Pim, a dancer at "The Dollhouse" who like many young women in Bangkok's sex industry is from the poor northeast region of Issan. "But we try to earn enough money to send home."

  To the unfamiliar, Thailand's raunchy nightlife appears alive and kicking. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls work in the sex trade, sending an estimated US$300 million annually to their families.

  But the industry is being put to the test by a high-profile nationwide morals campaign, the brainchild of Thailand's Interior Minister Purachai Piemsomboon which began last August.

  Hundreds of go-go bars, karaoke bars, discos and other nightlife venues have been raided in an effort to stamp out an epidemic of drug abuse and under-age drinking which has alarmed Thai authorities.

  But critics say the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is employing stormtrooper anti-drug tactics -- such as on-the-spot urine tests in discos and bars -- which are also ruining the legitimate nightlife trade.

  Apart from dusting off antiquated closing-hour laws, a long-forgotten regulation forbidding women from entering bars on their own has been revived in one inner-city district.

  As a result of the various initiatives, business has also slowed at the city's upscale bars and nightclubs which are not exempt from the early-closing mandate.

  "They're going from one extreme of complete chaos to being tyrannical and enforcing laws that are not practical," said Andrew Clark of Q Bar, one of the city's plushest nightspots which has also been a target of police raids.

  "When the bars are shut at two o'clock, everybody just goes underground."

  Purachai was named person of the year last year by Bangkok daily newspaper The Nation for what it called his "bold and relentless" efforts.

  Opinion polls, reflecting the disgust many Thais feel about the seedy reputation of Bangkok's nightlife, show he has strong popular support for his stand which is also backed by women's groups and religious organizations.

  But the minister has caught flak from several fronts, including bar owners, taxi drivers and economists who charge that his policy is under-cutting the lucrative tourism sector.

  "There is no bar in Thailand which hasn't been affected," said Australian Rick Glazner, who owns Sawadee, one of a string of ramshackle gin joints in a lot along Sukhumvit Road, a main city thoroughfare.

  "This isn't good for business," Glazner grumbled, saying takings were down by half and several waitresses on the strip have been laid off. "This isn't good for Thailand."

  "He's on a crusade," one barfly at Sawadee said of the minister. "A lot of people think he is taking it too far."

  There are also fears that the army of "bar girls" will be the big losers in the clampdown.

  "There is a feeling of big change, and this strict policy affects people," says Chantiwipa Apisuk, director of the Empower Foundation which since 1985 has fought for rights of sex workers.

  "The girls here feel they are being controlled," she said from the organization which has an office in the famed alleys of Patpong, where it estimates 20,000 people live off the nightlife trade.

  Chantiwipa said many sex workers earn no monthly salary and are forced onto the streets after 2am, often into more dangerous conditions, to make ends meet. As a result, assaults against prostitutes have risen.

  And when bar profits shrink, services like free health check-ups for bar girls are the first cut-backs, she said.

  Barkeepers also say condom machines have been removed from red-light districts, a worrying move in a country where some 300,000 people have died of AIDS and an estimated 700,000 are HIV-positive.

  Other commentators note that the action against high-profile nightlife venues in the capital and tourist havens like Pattaya and Phuket has done nothing to clean up back-street brothels where many under-age girls work.

  "The crackdown does not affect whatsoever the brothel scene, where the evil stuff like bonded prostitution happens behind closed doors," said Nick Nostitz, who chronicles Patpong nightlife in a running series of photographs.

  The thousands who depend on late-night trade hope authorities will soon tire of squashing Thailand's predilection for partying.

  "Purachai has mainly tried to get under-age people out of entertainment venues, and so far it's been reasonably successful," said Mechai Viravaidya, a prominent anti-AIDS activist who has long monitored these issues.

  "But interior ministers come and go, and nightlife is here to stay."
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