Government told to control the booming sex industry

Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Appropriate regulations are needed to control the rapid growth of prostitution as one of the side effects of the tourist industry, observers told a seminar here on Wednesday.

Tourism industry expert James J. Spillane and woman activist Elli Nur Hayati shared the opinion that growth in the sex industry had reached an alarming level, while the government adopted double standards in dealing with the matter.

"The sex industry now employs more and more children under 18. This is a serious problem," said Spillane, who heads the Sanata Dharma University's center for tourism and development studies.

The seminar was held by the Yogyakarta-based Catholic university.

The booming sex industry, he said, will also give rise to sexually transmitted diseases, including the deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), weaken people's morality and cost prostitutes their human rights protection.

The government has taken an ambiguous stance with the sex industry, Spillane said.

"They treat the sex industry as merely a problem of public order, while at the same time exploit it as a source of revenue," he said.

A recent study revealed that the sex industry contributed significantly to the economy, contributing between US$1.18 billion and $3.3 billion or some 2.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product annually.

The sex industry in the country involves some 230,000 prostitutes, not including transvestites and homosexual prostitutes.

Elli, who is also the director of Rifka Annissa Women's Crisis Center, suggested that the government enact regulations that protect the rights of prostitutes, the main actors in the sex industry but those who also receive the least benefit.

"They should have the right to reject customers who refuse to use condoms, for example," Elli said.

She said that the excessive growth in the sex industry was caused by both modern and traditional cultures.

"In former times, parents would present their virgin daughters to the kings, regents, or other rulers in order to obtain a higher social status," she said.

"Modernity, on the other hand, brings hedonism and consumerism, along with poverty among women who in this patriarchal culture can hardly get jobs with good pay."

Prostitution could earn women 10 times the salary they would receive in other jobs, she said.

Spillane said the government regulations could be moderate, as long as they banned child prostitution and encouraged rehabilitation of sex workers.