After months of grueling deployment in the Arabian Sea with no friendly ports available for R&R, the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is finally headed home, with its first stop in the Thai resort of Pattaya, famous for its vibrant red-light district. Once upon a time, letting horny sailors seek companionship in a port of call would have been considered normal and even essential for morale. But not now, as Thai authorities are rounding up and arresting sex workers in advance of the ship’s arrival and declaring certain parts of town off limits for sailors. Instead, the anti-trafficking organization Free Rain International is distributing to sailors information about Pattaya’s “cultural destinations” and churches. While technically illegal, sex work is widely practiced and seldom made the object of enforcement in Thailand. The rhetoric justifying the current crack-down hovers ambiguously between protecting “trafficked” sex workers from drunken sailors and protecting innocent young sailors from aggressive sex workers.
Authorities Clean Up Pattaya to Protect Sailors from Prostitution
