HANOI - Child prostitution is beginning to appear in Vietnam, and underground
foreign paedophile rings are starting to tout the communist-ruled country as the
next destination, an expert in the field said on Friday.
Christine Beddoe, tourism programme director for international group End Child
Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking (ECPAT) Australia, said there was
credible evidence to suggest foreign child sex tourists were active in Vietnam.
``There is really strong anecdotal evidence coming from Hoi An where it appears
foreign females are abusing underage boys,'' she said.
Hoi An is a charming old former trading port situated near Danang in central
Vietnam. Beddoe added that the northern mountain resort of Sapa was also being
repeatedly mentioned from different sources who remark on child sex abuse mostly
with young girls from the Hmong ethnic minority. Beddoe is running a 12-week
Australian government-funded project to educate and alert grassroots tourism
workers in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand to the dangers of child prostitution.
``It is very difficult for people (in Vietnam) to talk about child sex tourism
existing in their own communities,'' Beddoe said. ``They say they know it
happens in neighbouring countries and that they do not want that to happen in
Vietnam.''
The scheme aims to produce education material and raise awareness among staff
working for travel firms and hotels, and others involved in end delivery of
tourism related services.
``There is recognition that if nothing is done (child sex tourism) will become a
problem in Vietnam,'' Beddoe said.
Child prostitution in Thailand and Cambodia, which is much more widespread than
in Vietnam, has been documented, and foreign paedophiles have been prosecuted.
Beddoe said Australian Federal Police based in Bangkok were now certain that
known Australian paedophiles had been travelling to and operating in Vietnam.
Vietnam's illicit sex industry is booming and prostitutes are widely available
throughout the country.
Nguyen Thi Hue, who heads campaigns to eradicate social ills in Vietnam, said
recently the police had files on some 185,000 prostitutes nationwide, and that
at one point last year some 30 percent of all sex workers in this country of 79
million people were thought to be under the age of 16.
Hanoi was determined to stamp out the problem, Beddoe said.
``I have absolutely no doubt the Vietnam Administration of Tourism supports a
wider national campaign on the prevention of sex tourism including child sex
tourism,'' she said.
There are no reliable statistics on child prostitution in Vietnam, but the
police say the number of sex crimes in general marked annual increases in recent
years.
Some 19 countries operate extraterritorial laws that can be used to convict
people of child sex crimes committed on foreign soil. Neither Hanoi nor foreign
courts have prosecuted foreign nationals for child sex crimes that occurred in
Vietnam.
Reuters - June 10, 1999.
HUW
WATKIN in Hanoi
South China Morning Post
Friday, July 23, 1999
The
spread of HIV and Aids among young Vietnamese is growing faster than in any
Southeast Asian nation, infant mortality has risen dramatically over the past
year and nearly five million children under five are suffering from
malnutrition, according to health experts.
Releasing
annual health statistics in Hanoi yesterday, United Nations Children's Fund
(Unicef) representative Morten Giersing said HIV/Aids infection among children
under 15 had quadrupled in recent years and that Vietnam, together with China
and Namibia, now had the fastest rate of child infection in the world.
"In
1997, there were 1,100 children with HIV/Aids in Vietnam. Although this number
is low relative to other countries in the region, the rapid growth in the past
few years is cause for concern," Mr Giersing said.
"With
nearly half of Vietnamese living with HIV/Aids under 30 years of age, the
country's young productive resources are under threat and will be even more so
in the future."
Mr
Giersing said the Government - which predicts that national HIV/Aids infection
will rocket from a known 15,000 cases to 200,000 next year - must take urgent
steps to educate the young to stem the epidemic.
The
Unicef statistics also revealed that 47 per cent of children under five in rural
areas - nearly three times the number in Vietnam's cities - were stunted by
malnutrition.
Meanwhile, the Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City published figures yesterday revealing that the number of stillborn babies had increased by nearly eight per cent, deaths of infants under 12 months by 35 per cent and the number of underweight babies by more than 10 per cent between 1997 and 1998.