Thai nightclubs rocked by moral crackdown

Pattaya, the red light district of a tourist resort in Thailand is notorious for its gogo bars and exotic nightlife.

IT is two in the morning in Bangkok's notorious Patpong red light district, fabled for decades as a den of exotic vices and dizzying temptations.

And you can't even buy a beer.

The bars are closed. The girls have gone home. The ladyboys have gone home too. Patpong, usually teeming with tourists, touts promising improbable sex shows and bikini-clad gogo girls shouting "Handsome man!" at passing males, is a ghost town.

Thai gogo girls dance in a nightclub in the seaside resort of Pattaya. Thailand Interior Minister Purachai Piumsombun has launched a moral crusade to reimpose "social order" and wipe out illicit sex, drugs and underage drinking.

Thailand's nightlife is reeling under a crackdown led by Interior Minister Purachai Piumsombun - dubbed "Mr Clean" by the press - who has launched a moral crusade to reimpose "social order" and wipe out illicit sex, drugs and underage drinking.

It is not an easy mission in a country famed for its unbridled nightlife. But Purachai insists he is up to the task.

"This is going to be a prolonged war, and whoever is more tenacious will win," he told the Nation daily. "If you want to know if this interior minister is tenacious, well just watch me."

Police have been ordered to enforce rigidly laws that have been ignored for years. Teams of officers patrol nightlife areas after midnight, forcing bars to shut before 2:00am.

In lightning raids on Bangkok's leading nightclubs, sometimes led by Purachai himself, police have carried out on-the-spot urine tests to check for drug use. In one raid, Purachai arrived at Patpong at 2:30am and, furious that one bar was still open, ordered immediate disciplinary measures for local police.

Suspicious stalls

The crackdown has been enforced across the board, from trendy nightclubs to the gaudy gogo bar districts catering to foreign sex tourists. Even roadside noodle stalls have been ordered to stop selling alcohol after midnight.

It has provoked bitter debate throughout the country.

Many Thais are deeply dismayed by the increasing tendency of teenagers to turn to alcohol, drugs and sex. A survey earlier this year showing that a growing number of students and even schoolgirls were selling sex to pay for fashionable clothes and mobile phones led to an intense bout of national soul-searching.

Anxious to halt the tide of drug abuse, commercial sex and underage drinking, many have welcomed the crusade. A recent poll found 60 per cent of Bangkok residents backed the crackdown. But nightclub workers say their livelihoods are being destroyed.

"If they don't want us to work at night, they have to find jobs for us to do during the day," said Sooksom Posayanonth, who sings at the popular Music Cafe in Patpong.

Resistance to the crackdown has spanned the social classes, from gogo girls protesting that their earnings have been hit to affluent professionals angry that fashionable nightclubs and restaurants are being forced to close early.

Gop, manageress of a gogo bar in the seaside resort of Pattaya, said the victims of the crackdown were Thailand's poor. She said gogo girls had few alternatives to working in bars.

"They are very poor people. They come here, they have a job to do and they send money back home," she said.

"And what happens if many people lose their job...? They have no money to send back home, and that's the government's problem."

Opponents of Purachai's crusade say the crackdown will also strangle a crucial pillar of Thailand's economy - tourism.

But the interior minister has dismissed this argument.

"Tourists are here because they want to see natural beauty," he said. "They don't want to see exotic dancers or take drugs."

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said those unhappy about the crackdown would just have to start their revels earlier.

"Those who want to go out must readjust," he said.

"Instead of going out at midnight they should go out at, say, 9 o'clock. That's five hours, it's more than enough. We have to bring back happiness to the family."

Prostitution pays

Critics of Purachai's crackdown say that while shutting down nightclubs early may grab headlines, it will do little to halt drug abuse and the exploitation of women.

In particular, they say, the government needs to tackle Thailand's gaping social inequalities which lure so many people into seeking to profit from selling narcotics or sex.

A successful bar girl can earn far more than a teacher, nurse or civil servant. For poorly educated and unskilled women from Thailand's impoverished provinces, the bright lights of Bangkok's sex industry exert a powerful temptation.

One 24-year-old Patpong bar girl said she used to work as a waitress for 2,000 baht ($45.45) a month.

"I can get more than that for spending one night with a customer," she said. "What else am I going to do?"

In a month, she earns more than 35,000 baht. The entry-level civil service salary is less than 10,000 baht a month.

Her parents expect her to help support them. Her two brothers are addicted to methamphetamines and provide nothing. Her 16-year-old sister has just joined her in Bangkok, to earn more money to send to their family back in northeastern Thailand.

Another obstacle to the anti-vice crusade is the attitude of the police. For years there has been a vast gulf between the law and the reality as far as Thai nightlife is concerned.

Prostitution is officially illegal, but there are few countries where it is easier to buy sex.

Many police profit from Thailand's nightlife, through "gifts" in return for turning a blind eye to breaches of the law, and sometimes even through running gogo bars themselves. So the crackdown has hit the income of those expected to enforce it.

In an editorial, the Nation noted that this was the main reason past crackdowns on nightlife had always fizzled out.

"The single most important factor is failure by the police to enforce existing laws governing night-time entertainment establishments," it said. "It is an open secret that virtually all operators in the entertainment businesses bribe police to turn a blind eye to their violations of the law."

(Agencies via Xinhua)