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KUALA LUMPUR: The rise of budget travel has enabled child sex offenders to move around more easily.
While tourism is soaring, thanks to cheaper flights, affordable accomodation and easy accessibility, child protection lags behind.
This was what has been suggested by evidence gathered for the Global Study on Sexual Explotation of Children in Travel and Tourism, launched by Ecpat International here on Tuesday (March 27). Ecpat is a global network of civil society groups working to end sexual exploitation of children.
Traditional destinations affected by travelling sex offenders such as Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines continue to struggle with this heinous crime.
Meanwhile the sex industry in emerging tourist destinations like Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam continues to grow.
“The Philippines is of particular concern but our research suggests that Malaysia is not immune (to the sexual exploitation of children by travellers),” ECPAT executive director Dorothy Rozga said during the launch.
“For example, Malaysia has the highest number of IP addresses for uploading and downloading child sex abuse matetrial in South-East Asia, with close to 20,000 IP addresses recorded in 2015,” she added.
In 2015, Malaysia was ranked as the fourth most visited country in Asia and the Pacific region with 25.7mil arrivals.
With the rise in travel, there is concern that there will be a rise of travelling child sex offenders entering and exiting the country.
However, the report said it’s difficult to get accurate figures on the number of victims and offenders. This is due to the clandestine nature of the crime, where criminals use advanced technology and secret societies, plus the fear of victims to lodge reports.
The modus operandi of those who sexually exploit children in the course of travel and tourism can range from those who travel with the specific objective of sexually abusing children to those who engage in the crime when the opportunity arise during their travels.
While they are predominantly male, there is no specific profile or nationality; they may be locals travelling domestically or international travellers.
Factors that have led to the increase of travelling child sex offenders include cheap flight tickets, simplified visa procedures and easier border crossings where offenders may use Malaysia as a transit point to other countries.
The worldwide growth of travel and tourism has also increased diverse forms of travel such as volunteer tourism, gap years and home sharing, all of which pose as opportunities for child sex offenders to exploit children.
For example, convicted paedophile Richard Huckle (who was arrested in Britain in 2016 for sexually exploiting up to 200 Malaysian children in Kuala Lumpur) managed to gain access to children in churches, schools and orphanages by masquerading as an English teacher on a gap year programme.
“Children are not commodities and should never be considered as part of the holiday package,” Unicef representative in Malaysia Marriane Clark-Hattingh said.
She stressed the need for zero-tolerance against child sex exploitation to make Malaysia and other countries in the region a safer travel destination for children.
The study also indicated that Malaysia has also become an exporter of child sex offenders to neighbouring countries.
It found that more than 3,000 tourists from Malaysia and Singapore are reported to visit the Indonesian island of Batam every week for sex services, where 30% of over 5,000 individuals involved in the sex industry there are children.
Malaysia, due to its strategic location in South-East Asia, has become a destination country for trafficked children, many of whom end up in prostitution.
In the report, Ecpat International said Kuala Lumpur is home to a thriving sex industry with an estimated 150 children forced into the industry every year.
These children, as young as 13, reportedly operate out of dilapidated low-cost apartments rather than brothels to avoid detection from the authorities.
The two-year study was conducted in 15 countries and nine regions.
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