Published: 10/10/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
Child pornography and other explicit films are still being sold openly along Sukhumvit Road despite a police promise to crack down on the illicit sales.
After the Bangkok Post Sunday broke the story last week, we revisited the stalls from Monday to Friday and observed an increase in the total amount of pornography being sold, with explicit gay movies added to the titles on offer. Child pornography was still openly on sale, along with bestiality movies.
Saravuth Chindakham, chief of Lumpini police station which covers the area, said yesterday police were trying to crack down on sellers of the child pornography VCDs and DVDs.
The crackdown was ordered by the chief of Metropolitan Police Division 5, Pol Maj Gen Anuchai Lekbamrung, following our report last Sunday which found the pornography on sale between Sois 3 and 21. Pol Col Saravuth admitted it was difficult to catch the vendors red-handed as the stall owners dispersed before police arrived. He said the main tactic officers used was to pose as a buyer.
‘‘At least pressure from police will make it difficult for them to do business,’’ he said.
Pol Lt Col Piyoros Kanhasiri, an investigator at Lumpini station who is directly responsible for the cases, said he sent his team to the area once, but the sellers closed their stalls. He said officers would police the areas regularly to try to put an end to the problem.
During our follow-up investigation last week, our team spent about two hours a night observing the stalls. We saw no attempt by police to confiscate the offensive material or make an arrest and the sellers appeared unworried by any threat of a police crackdown.
One of the street’s largest sellers of child porn had it on display on Friday night.
‘‘What do you want? Thai, Japanese or European?’’ said the vendor to passing tourists, including adultsparents with small children.
When one passer-by stopped to look, he asked, ‘‘Do you want ‘Lolita’?’’, pointing at covers showing children aged under 10. ‘‘I can sell you one movie for 100 baht or six for 500 baht. You can buy now,’’ the seller said pushing to make a sale.
The amount of child pornography on display varies throughout the day; however, we noticed it was always available after 8pm.
One seller boasted to the Bangkok Post Sunday team that child pornography was now available on DVDs instead of VCDs ‘‘which are not so good in quality’’.
A foreign diplomat who lives in the area and has been monitoring the situation on a daily basis since the story was published, said he was amazed that the obscene material had not been seized.
‘‘They don’t have to mount a big operation or make many arrests, they just have to take it away so thousands of passers-by don’t have to look at it,’’ said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.
He said that authorities’ inaction could embolden the vendors. ‘‘They are encouraged to continue and even increase their business because they know that they are well looked after by someone powerful.’’
During our follow-up investigation, sSome vendors became suspicious and packed up for two hours on Friday night after we started asking about the sale of child pornography. But the stalls reopened two hours later, with the pornography again on display.
One of the sellers said he was aware of the Bangkok Post Sunday story, but was not worried about being arrested as it was not published by a Thai-language paper.
Bron: Bangkok Post
