Vietnam's new front line
The scourge of sex tourism, paedophiles who travel abroad to abuse children, is the latest western threat to invade Vietnam, writes Ruaridh Arrow
Nha-Trang is famous for its beautiful palm lined, white sandy beaches flanked by the drinking dens frequented by rich western tourists who congregate here every year in increasingly large numbers. Old women patrol the beaches selling fruit or lobsters which they barbecue beside your sun lounger while a steady stream of young children try to sell you everything from watches to postcards and forgeries of the latest European book releases. This may seem like paradise but the grotesque flashing lights on the beach front make NhaTrang seem more like a prostitute smiling for her next customer than a town celebrating its new found wealth. The people of Vietnam, invaded by the Chinese, colonised by the French and ripped apart by the Americans are facing a new threat from the West.
At night the old women who patrol the beach are not selling fruit. The white sandy beaches are littered at their fringes with used condoms and hypodermic syringes and the children who are not left sleeping on the beaches under the flashing lights are being taken to local hotels by western paedophiles.
Kimmy Le knows all about the problems here. In 1996 she returned to her native Vietnam from teaching in Canada to open her bar, Crazy Kim's. Almost immediately she noticed that the influx of tourists which was bringing huge prosperity to Nha-Trang was also attracting sex tourists in large numbers. As the authorities in Thailand and Cambodia had begun to crack down, more and more paedophiles were moving on to Vietnam as a safer option.
I met Kimmy at Crazy Kim's during a tropical storm which seemed to add to the gravity of what I was there to talk to her about. Thunder crashed outside, the tarmac bounced rain back at the sky and the palms lining the roads bent double in the wind. As we sat down in an alcove at the back of the bar, the power failed and the little table candles which were our only light flickered perilously as the wind gusted through the shutters.
She looked at me with the sort of expression that a parent might reserve for telling a child that their grandfather wasn't going to wake up again; a sincere, sad look which said, `I'm going to tell you something about the world you didn't know before and you're not going to like it.' The big brown envelope held all the answers and the barmaid who passed it to Kimmy knew what was in it too. "This is the grid," she said, pushing a white photocopy across the wooden table towards me. "Down the side are their names, the next line is their age, most are around nine to 12 years old. This one I know, Kien, he's 11, and works on the beach selling books." I ask what the other column are, not really wanting the answer. "We don't know all of them," she sighs. "The first one is penis size, erect there and flaccid there. The paedophiles like measuring the kids; penis, hands, feet everything." She points to the next column. "These tick boxes show whether a video or photo has been taken of the sex, the next is whether the children were active or passive and the others are for particular sex acts performed on, or by the child."
There are a number of photocopies of explicit photos attached. Young children tied up, performing sex acts and being penetrated orally and anally in various positions. Kimmy recognises some of them. The level of organisation of the paedophile rings is terrifying. Together, the papers seized by Interpol amount to a beginners' guide for sex tourists. There is advice on how to go unnoticed travelling with young children and names and numbers of hotels which tum a blind eye to people taking children up to their rooms. Another page contains the details of how much children or their parents should be paid and the address or pan of the beach where each child listed can be found. In total the grid contained over 150 names of children between the ages of seven and 15. It belonged to a member of a European paedophile ring and would have been downloaded from a web address on the net. The list had been regularly updated with new children and shared with other paedophiles visiting the area. Having his name on the list meant one NhaTrang teenager had been sexually abused by more than 70 men. Some of the few children' tested by a visiting Dutch doctor have become HIV positive.
Sometimes a paedophile will try to ‘adopt’ a child, offering the families up to $5,000, a fortune in a country where the average salary rarely exceeds $10. Parents often think they are sending their children away to a better life in a western country but instead they travel with a paedophile for a while, often suffering terrible sexual abuse and are then dumped, sometimes hundreds of miles from their families.Kimmy has seen men arrive in Nha-Trang with up to three children, all from different areas of Vietnam. Displaced with no money and no way back home, they fall into crime and prostitution to survive.
The opening up of Vietnam to capitalism and the influx of tourists has severely warped the economy causing widespread corruption. It means that the chief of police in the district now earns less than one of Kimmys' barmaids. It isn't too hard to understand how paedophile organisations can arrange to operate freely here without any interference from the authorities. Those who are caught in the act quickly buy themselves out of trouble and disappear.
Determined to do something, Kimmy started to produce T-shirts for the children working on the beach and printed them with "Child Sex is a Crime" in large bright letters. "The children were so pleased to be getting something free that they queued outside Crazy Kim's. Reports soon began to filter back that the paedophiles were staying away from children wearing the Tshirts.
The next step was to mobilise the local community to keep watch on the restaurants and hotels listed on the paedophile grid. Albert a French barber with a huge moustache, kept watch on the Rose Hotel from his shop, a cyclo driver reported back on the movements of men who looked suspicious and some of the older children, many of whom had been abused themselves, took on a warden role over the younger ones on the beach. "They're easy to spot," smirks one of the wardens. "They always come with a GameBoy. When a kid selling postcards or whatever, approaches them, they'll let them play maybe one game and then tell them that there are more back at the hotel. These kids have nothing, so they go."
Kimmy thinks her efforts are starting to make an impact. "The locals who have got involved have run quite a few of these men out of town now. We think there have been warnings in chat rooms and on the grids that Nha-Trang is a difficult place to operate. There has definitely been a decrease but we know they're still here."
The sad fact is that a decrease in Nha-Trang means an increase somewhere else in Vietnam or perhaps Cambodia. With the enormous economic power that the average European citizen can wield, the only action that would make a serious impact on the problem is a joint policy on sex tourism created and imposed by western governments. A ban on travel to sensitive countries for those on the Sex Offenders Register and a greater number of Interpol officers working against the networks that produce the grids would go some way to tackling this growing problem.
For now Kimmy Le doesn't feel she can leave Nha-Trang. "As long as I can make it difficult for the paedophile networks I'll stay. Who else is going to look after the kids?
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