ST 2005.05.06

Time to throw the book at child sex tour organisers

By Andy Ho
Senior Writer

RECENTLY, Temasek Polytechnic teacher Darwis Rianto Lim was arrested in Bangkok for allegedly trying to procure young boys for sex.

He is not the only Singaporean to have tried that. A recent Johns Hopkins study shows that some Singaporeans visit Batam for sex with girls as young as 14 years.

As domestic law stands at the moment, Singaporeans commit no offence when they have sex with children while overseas.

This is despite the urging of a number of people over the years to change the law. Last year, Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng explained in Parliament that, even if there were such an amendment, implementing it to deter local child-sex tourists would be fraught with difficulties.

But not everyone is convinced. The president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers, Mr Subhas Anandan, points out that Singaporeans who take drugs elsewhere have been prosecuted when they returned home.

But the parallel between drug takers and paedophiles is far from perfect, for several reasons.

Mr Lim Hsin Hin, a Singaporean lawyer practising in London, points out that there is a principle of 'active nationality', which is recognised under international law, which makes it permissible for a government to exercise territorial jurisdiction over one of its nationals for crimes committed abroad. This principle is widely accepted in drugs cases, but whether it would be equally accepted in paedophilia cases remains untested.

Then there is the concern over 'double jeopardy'. As Mr Anandan says, while a local who has sex with children overseas should be prosecuted when he returns home, the offender should not be convicted in two countries as it would not be fair to punish a person twice.

This sounds about right - but there is an exception for the worst crimes under the 'dual sovereignty' rule. That is, while a person should not be prosecuted twice for the same offence by the same sovereign, but if his act violates the laws of two sovereigns, it can then be seen as two distinct offences under the 'dual sovereignty' exception.

Thus, re-prosecution on coming home in such cases would not count as double jeopardy and could be permissible.

At any rate, in the real world, prosecutions rarely occur in the countries where child sex acts take place. Thus, local law would likely be prosecuting a Singaporean child sex tourist for the first time - without fear of double jeopardy.

This means that the Singapore Government could amend the law to cover child sex tourists under the active nationality principle, even re-prosecute them under the dual sovereignty exception. Yet it has not done so.

Why? Very practical reasons apply.

While most of the countries where the child sex trade occurs have laws prohibiting it, local law enforcement is lax. Poverty drives families to sell their own children into prostitution. Gathering evidence against a child sex offender under such circumstances would be a nightmare for any prosecutor, from Singapore or anywhere else.

For instance, both Australia and the United States have adopted laws against child sex tourists.

There is the Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment Act (CST Act) in Australia while the US has its Protect (Prosecutorial Remedies and other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today) Act.

However, both laws have seen only limited success. After a decade of enforcement, Australia has only charged 16 people and convicted a mere 11 of them.

Similarly, the US Protect Act itself was a 2003 update of the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Act of 1994, under which only two US citizens were ever convicted.

If these experiences are anything to go by, a Singaporean amendment may fare no better as local prosecutors will face the same difficulties that hobble Australian and US prosecutors. Mr Lim points out four of them.

First, in gathering evidence abroad, investigators who are unfamiliar with the laws there may infringe upon them, leading to their own arrests or detentions. Moreover, the foreign jurisdiction may perceive its sovereignty to have been challenged, which could spark off a diplomatic spat.

Second, some countries make it difficult for foreign law enforcement officers to gather evidence on their soil. Until recently, the most common method of obtaining such evidence was a letter rogatory, a request by one court of a foreign counterpart for help in obtaining information. This has to pass through a long diplomatic chain, which may take a year or longer.

A newer alternative is the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters treaty (MLAT). Last November, all Asean nations including Singapore - but not Thailand and Myanmar - signed a multilateral MLAT.

(Child sex tourism thrives in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia and is beginning to flourish in Cambodia and Vietnam.)

Even so, that treaty will come into effect only after it has been ratified by the respective governments. Still, MLATs are generally only available to prosecutors, while defence counsel must usually resort to letters rogatory to obtain evidence.

Third, whether resorting to letters rogatory or MLATs, while abroad, foreign law will still govern the standards of evidence gathering there. For example, a witness will testify according to his country's standards for criminal proceedings.

So a Singaporean consular officer might, in theory, be allowed by the host country to administer oaths to witnesses before recording their testimonies abroad. But while Thailand permits such voluntary depositions for some consulates, its witnesses are allowed - according to Thai practice - to refuse to take the oath.

Under such circumstances, Singaporean procedural safeguards when obtaining witness testimony may not be observed such that strict Singaporean statutory requirements may not be met.

Last, there are difficulties in locating witnesses, language barriers and the need for interpreters in the field and during the trial process itself. Dealing with child witnesses is also particularly difficult, especially those who have been abused sexually.

It all looks insuperable.

So shall we forget about adopting any child sex tourism law at all?

Not necessarily.

Adopting a law - like 32 nations other have done - will send a signal to Singaporeans who are planning child sex jaunts abroad that they will be prosecuted when they come home.

One option is for a law to focus on the organisers of child sex tours, in addition to the offenders themselves.

True, not much is known about local operators yet. In 1995, an Australian parliamentary investigation found no evidence to suggest that organised commercial ventures were involved there. Child sex tour 'operators' were thought to be paedophiles networking informally with others of their ilk to assist one another going overseas for child sex.

Today, however, as the Johns Hopkins University study has found, there are more than 100 websites promoting child sex tourism in Asia alone. Travel agents and website owners, it says, advertise child sex tours to hot spots in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

The study has also found that Singaporeans formed the largest group of sex tourists in the Riau islands, including Batam, where spending a night with a girl reportedly costs $40. Virgins, including the underaged, cost $500 each. In Batam, 3 per cent of its 6,600 prostitutes are underaged.

To match that supply with demand, it is not unlikely that tour organisers are already operating alone or in syndicates here. Ferreting them out is work cut out for law enforcement officials.

It makes sense to target profit-motivated operators as punitive fines and jail time could change their behaviour. Also, convicting one sex tourist removes but one perpetrator, while taking a tour organiser out of action hinders several child sex tourists at one go.


ST 2005.05.06

Time to put our foot down on the sex trade

By Braema Mathi

IT WAS a desperate call to a helpline from a man who wanted to free two young Thai sex workers from a Geylang brothel.

Their ordeal was horrible: They had a quota of 10 men per night; they were banned from going out; and they had to clear a debt of 10,000 baht (S$420) within two weeks before their social visit passes expired.

His account clearly showed the girls were forced into a situation and needed help. But they were afraid to seek it.

It would have meant filing charges against the brothel owner, and the Singapore and Thai agents. And they themselves risked jail terms for having worked illegally - in the sex trade to boot - while on a social visit pass.

These women never took up the offer of help. Their plight, and those of others, will remain unchanged until we review our approach to the trafficking of people.

Victim or criminal?

THE United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children offers one such solution. Some 120 countries have signed it.

It defines the trafficked persons as victims, who were so vulnerable that they ended up being exploited, whether for the sex trade, or as slaves, or to have their organs removed.

The definition means the consent of the individual becomes irrelevant.

Instead, the trafficker is criminalised under this protocol, which is a supplement to the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime. Singapore is a signatory to this document.

Adopting this definition requires putting in place a legislative process to confiscate assets from traffickers to compensate victims.

A system of tracking and investigating violators through greater transnational cooperation will also be needed, as will support schemes to help the victims.

This way, the trafficked person may also be more willing to help in the investigations as she will not be treated as a criminal.

Singapore maintains there is minimal incidence of trafficked persons here. But using this broader definition may give rise to higher numbers.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is making changes. It has said there is a need to accord greater protection to minors as they are not yet fully mature, physically or psychologically.

This is a positive sign.

We now need to extend this same approach to the protection of adults, who are also victims of trafficking.

But a bigger challenge is to review the definition of trafficking.

Lucrative global industry

THE global sex industry has been growing since the early 1990s and runs parallel to the entertainment, travel, leisure and gambling industries, often complementing each other.

Its growth is aided by the complicity of some sender countries, which depend on remittances by their women and children, and therefore do not take steps to be vigilant.

Some of those at the helm of the trafficking business are also major financial supporters of political parties and are hardly taken to task for their activities.

This industry will continue to grow because corruption, poverty, and the advent of easy and cheap travel will steer people into the trade, or to be its consumers.

Accurate data is hard to come by, but statistics from the International Organisation for Migration reveal that nearly one-third of the global trafficking trade - or about 200,000 to 250,000 women and children - is from South-east Asia.

It is also a lucrative business. Thai estimates showed the trade is at least three times more profitable than drug trafficking.

Regional action

IT WAS heartening that at the recent Conference on Trafficking held here, Asean secretary-general Ong Keng Yong spoke of instituting an Asean declaration to tackle this problem.

This has been on the cards for more than a year and I hope the process can be speeded up as there is already an Asean Centre for Combating Transnational Crime (ACTC) whose focus
includes looking into issues of trafficking.

Some terms of reference for the Asean Task Force could include brothel licensing criteria, dealing with corrupt officers, and criminalising traffickers and those in the travel businesses.

Strengthen laws here

WE HAVE always been very serious players when it comes to becoming signatories to conventions.

But we are found wanting when we align ourselves with some international treaties and not with others on the same issue.

For money laundering, we amended the Extradition Act to make certain serious crimes extraditable offences.

Yet we seem to fight shy of having the Extradition Act applied to those who travel to solicit sex with minors.

Our domestic laws are a deterrent and do protect our own women and children.

But these laws become meaningless if a Singaporean takes his violent ways to children in the region.

Equipping our laws with an extra-territorial jurisdiction provision means rapists may have to come home to face trial.

MHA's multi-agency committee is reviewing sexual offences currently prescribed in the Penal Code, Women's Charter and Children and Young Persons Act.

It will also be timely to review possibilities for extradition and strengthening laws to protect children and women caught in offshore sex industries.

While the State can play its part, we, too, need to question our values.

Is the Singapore male so irrepressible in his quest to have paid and casual sex that we tolerate the sex industry and have stopped asking our men why they persist in doing so.

Sweden has criminalised men who buy sex, and women who offer sex as prostitutes.

Yes, there will be some men who will move to other countries as travellers to get their quick fix.
But the message that resounds in Sweden for the majority of the population is one of respecting women and themselves.

Where will we stand on this, Singapore?

The writer, a former Nominated MP, is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies (Gender Studies Programme). This is her personal comment.