SOUTH ASIA : Sri Lanka Cracks Down on Tourists Seeking Sex With Children

At first the German tourist couldn’t believe it. Arrested for wanting to have sex with a young boy in Sri Lanka? Unheard of.

Not now. In an attempt to deter foreign visitors who fly to this Indian Ocean island nation seeking sea, sun and sex with children, the government has amended the penal code to punish anyone who has sex with a minor with a possible five to 20 years in prison--the same sentences given pimps.

“It’s become fairly high on the government’s agenda after years of being a lot lower down,” said Peter Dixon, field director for the British charity Save The Children-U.K.

The crackdown makes Sri Lanka the latest Third World country to take steps against sexual tourism involving children, a trade that some countries have winked at, in part because of the income in dollars, yen and other foreign currencies it produces.

This easy-living land formerly known as Ceylon has had a reputation as a pedophile’s paradise. Social activists estimate that 5,000 children, mostly boys, ply beach resorts and other spots frequented by foreign visitors in search of clientele.

In 1994 and 1995, half a dozen foreigners, including the disbelieving German, as well as men from Britain, France, Sweden and Switzerland, were arrested on charges of having sex with minors or intending to do so. None has been sentenced to prison, officials said this week.

But the arrests and the law that was toughened in September, activists say, are sending the right signal.

“For Sri Lanka, it is an unprecedented number [of arrests], and the message has gone out that this country is taking action against this type of criminal activity,” Maureen Seneviratne, chairwoman of Protecting Environment and Children Everywhere, an advocacy group, told reporters this month.

According to the Bangkok-based organization End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), at least 1 million children worldwide now work as prostitutes. A study by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington two years ago found that child prostitution was on the rise.

Experts say the global AIDS scare is one reason.

“With the growing fear of HIV infection, many people are always on the search for young and younger victims, and [the demand] has been unfortunately met by the ever eager middlemen,” said Ramesh Shrestha, a UNICEF official in Hanoi.

At least a dozen countries from New Zealand to Iceland have passed laws meant to curb sexual tourism involving their nationals and minors in poorer countries. In a landmark case in June, a Swedish man in his late 60s was convicted by a court in his own country for sexual offenses committed with a 14-year-old boy in Thailand.

About the same time that Sri Lanka’s amended penal code took effect, a new U.S. law made it a federal crime for a U.S. resident to travel abroad if the “primary purpose” is to have sex with boys or girls younger than 18.

In August, an international conference is to be held in Stockholm on how to stem the sexual exploitation of children worldwide. Sexual tourism is just one aspect of the problem.

It seems clear, though, that the iron logic of economics will limit the effectiveness of even the strictest laws. In Thailand, for instance, one study found that poor, uneducated girls can make 25 times more as prostitutes than in other occupations customarily open to them.

And as some countries crack down, it may merely drive the underage sex trade--and its globe-trotting customers--elsewhere.

“India and other South Asian countries are slowly replacing Southeast Asia, as there are fewer laws here against child sexual abuse,” Ron O’Grady of ECPAT said while visiting India last year.