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Thailand maintains a reputation as a center for child sex tourism and child prostitution, and although domestic and international authorities have worked to protect children, the problem remains serious.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.unodc.org/southeastasiaandpacific/en/2012/03/childhood-workshop-thailand/story.html )〕 ==History== As founder of Free the Slaves, a non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of modern slavery, Kevin Bales writes, “Thailand has always had slavery, but never before on this scale.”〔 The forced labor which child prostitutes in Thailand undergo at the hands of pimps and brothels is more than enough to constitute this frightening term. Prostitution has taken many forms in Thailand over the years. It has been a part of Thai culture for centuries, as there’s a reason it’s known as “the world’s oldest profession.” Recorded prostitution in Thailand dates back as far as the 14th century, when it was legal and taxed by the government. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, the demand for prostitution rose once again as the immigration of male Chinese men increased dramatically.〔(Lean, Lin (ed.) 1998 The Sex Sector: The Economic and Social Bases of Prostitution in Southeast Asia. International Labour Office. )〕 As Lim writes, “these women were essentially slaves, who could be sold by their owners.”〔 Thus, the abolition of slavery in 1905 by King Rama V essentially made forced prostitution illegal. Two of the main contributing factors to child prostitution, religion and cultural pressure, have been prominent in Thai culture for centuries.〔(Chris, and Pasuk Phongpaichit 2005 A History of Thailand. New York: Cambridge University Press )〕 American history has also played a major role in the prominence of child prostitution in Thailand. The Vietnam War gave new life to prostitution in Thailand, and allowed it to grow at an extremely rapid rate. Although the demand by soldiers was for women rather than young girls, the industry within Thailand became more developed than it ever had before. In 1968, more than 536,000 troops had been deployed to fight the communists of Northern Vietnam.〔(Kathryn 2005 Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children. New York: Worth Publishers ),〕 Vietnamese prostitutes were used to satiate the soldiers at first, but the demand eventually outpaced the supply. As a result, women were taken from neighboring countries like Thailand. There were also five bases located in Thailand, which housed up to 50,000 soldiers.〔 Kathryn Farr makes clear that the correlation between the amount of troops in Vietnam and the amount of prostitutes in Thailand is impossible to ignore. “In 1957, an estimated 20,000 prostitutes were working in Thailand. By 1964, that number had grown to 400,000, and by 1972, when the United States withdrew its main combat troops from Vietnam, there were at least 500,000 working prostitutes in the country. From there on, the Thai sex industry simply exploded.”〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Child prostitution in Thailand」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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