OPENING REMARKS:

In many countries paying for sex is illegal.

Pampanga's red light district is one of the biggest and
oldest sex destinations in the world. It is already an
all-knowing fact that prostitution in the Philippines is
unlawful. Penalties range up to life imprisonment for
those involved in trafficking, which is wholly covered
by the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.
However, despite all these measures, prostitution in
Pampanga, specifically in Angeles City, is legal since
the 90s. It is now Pampanga's main tourist attraction
generating millions of pesos a year.

PROSTITUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES

Even though it is widely practiced, prostitution is

illegal in the Philippines. There is an organized
movement to make prostitution a legal activity in the
Philippines. By one estimate a half a million women
prostitute themselves.

Most of the men who use prostitutes in the Philippines

are locals not foreigners. You would not get this
impression by visiting one of the better known red
light districts. Local tend to use community-,
neighborhood- and town- based brothel and sex
workers. In Angeles City, near Clark Air base, there is
one street with bars for foreigners on one side, and
bars for locals on the other.

Former prostitute Liza Gonzales told the Philippines

Inquirer, Women in this field are often looked at as
sinners and home wreckers. But we are not criminals
We are actually victims, Gonzales said. Some are
victims of rape or incest. Some are girls from rural
areas who were fooled by illegal recruiters We are
victims of different circumstances, but we all fell into
prostitution, she said.

The police arguably do more to abet prostitution than

stop it. One sex worker told the Philippine Inquirer:
When cops like the apprehended woman, she is
forced to have sex with them. Nowadays, kotong
(bribe) ranges from P3, 000 to P4, 500, and
transactions begin even before they reach the
precinct, she said.

Transvestites (cross dressers) also participate in

prostitution, especially with unwary foreigners. Male
homosexuals and child prostitutes who created Asias
reputation for sex tourism are concentrated in major
metropolitan cities.

EARLY HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION IN THE

PHILIPPINES

When the American troops liberated the Philippines

from Japanese imperialism in October 1945, many
American soldiers left illegitimate Amerasian children
behind. The mothers of these children and their
Amerasian children were social outcasts. In order for
these mothers to survive, they became part-time
prostitutes in the rural areas for single laborers and
traveling salesmen and in the cities with all kinds of
customers.

IMPACT OF THE U.S. MILITARY AND THE

VIETNAM WAR ON THE SEX TRADE IN THE
PHILIPPINES

In 1947, President Roxas signed a military agreement

granting twenty-two military bases to the United
States. In the following year, the two largest U.S.
military bases in the Far East, the Naval Subic Bay
and Clark Air Force Base, were established north of
Manila. Angeles City, located near Clark Air Force
Base, later became the Mecca of Sex Trade, the
military adult-entertainment capital of the Philippines,
with every variety of prostitution, exotic bars,
pornography, and sex tourism conceivable.

MODERN PROSTITUTION IN THE

PHILIPPINES

With the advent of information technology and global

travel, the old part-time prostitutes have moved to the
big cities. Prostitution survives because of poverty,
the commercialization of human relations, and the
sustained carnal demand. Although for different
reasons, all social classes made their contributions to
the trade in sexual services. The rich are looking for
entertainment and diversity of sexual practices that
they would never dare to ask from their wives. These
respectable matrons are assigned by society only to
bear and raise children, manage households
(sometimes businesses), and organize social
activities. The out-of-town students, immigrant
workers, and wayward youths may be looking for their
first sexual experiences and to combat the loneliness
of being separated from their family for the first time.
The poor frequent the brothels to affirm their
masculinity by using many women or to relieve their
loneliness.

GOVERNMENT MONITORING OF PROSTITUTE

IN THE PHILIPPINES

Although prostitution is still illegal, Filipino society

believes that some regulation is always needed,
based on the premise that prostitution is regulated in
order to minimize the damage to society. Local city
councils may require filing an application with the city
to establish a brothel, indicating the location for legal
reasons and/or tax purposes. Local authorities may
also restrict brothels to certain areas and regulate any
signs that would identify it as a brothel. Prostitutes
cannot reside anywhere other than at the brothel
itself, which is her official domicile. Brothels also have
to have a bedroom for each working woman. The
women cannot show themselves at the balconies or
in a window, nor can they solicit in the streets. In
order to work in a brothel, a woman has to register
with the sanitary health authorities (Bureau of Health).
The authorities will check whether she is a victim of
deceit or coercion and advise her that help and
assistance is available from legal authorities.

Each prostitute is given a sanitary notebook with her

picture, personal data, registration number (if any),
and the main articles of the decree that concern her
rights as a provider of a service. Her rights include
being free to stay or quit the brothel in which she lives
and works, debts cannot be used to compel her to
stay in a given brothel, and no one can subject her to
any abuse. Each prostitute has to undergo mandatory
monthly medical examinations for sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs). If an STD is diagnosed,
the brothel pays for medical treatment. The sex
worker must show her sanitary notebook to any
customer that asks to see it. The manager of the
brothel cannot accept any prostitute-candidate or
applicant who has not first registered and passed a
medical examination. The manager also has to report
immediately to the sanitary authorities whenever a
prostitute is ill, be this an STD or non-sexual disease.

It is easy to imagine the rampant corruption that this

naive attempt to protect customers and suppliers of
contractual sex alike has produced. Police protection
is bought, violations are ignored, and politicians and
judges are bribed, often on the pretext of protecting
the free practice of a fully consensual sex by the
client and sex worker. In reality, this law and its
application or lack thereof does little to protect the
health of the women and their clients. The women
have no protection from customers already infected.
The prostitutes can request that their clients wear
condoms, but cannot demand the performance of
safe sex practices. The clients are not subject to
compulsory medical control, and many may be
infected but not show any symptoms while others
suffer in silence and continue practicing unsafe sex
with other prostitutes, lovers, and even wives.

SEX TOURISM IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippines has always been known as the

Pearl of the Orient Seas, the Land of the Three Ss -
Sun, Sand, and Sea. A fourth S, Sex, sold in coolly
wrapped packages, has emerged to the point where it
has already warranted the United Nations attention:
sex tourism involving child prostitutes as young as 6
years old.
Angeles City in Pampanga, north of Manila, once
home of the mighty Clark U.S. Air Base, is now being
developed as an international airport. But the new
airport has also become the center of sex tours to the
Philippines, openly promoted abroad, arranged by
Filipino tour operators and their foreign counterparts,
with attractive come-ons for men seeking sexual
activities with virginal or child prostitutes who they
hope are free of STD and HIV infections.

While the government is making major arrests in this

trade, and sex establishments are regularly closed
down, the front page of major dailies show bikini-clad
young girls being led away by operatives, but never
the brothel owners, the tour operators, their cohorts,
and pimps.

The Philippine Congress is still struggling to pass a

law making a customer of a child prostitute criminally
liable, even if he does not engage the services of a
pimp. An increase of the maximum punishment for
child labor and exploitation to twenty years was
sought. The 1995 law set the punishment for child
prostitution at twenty years in prison; the punishment
for pornography and pedophilia, however, remained
unchanged.

Sex tourism is the third-highest money-making

industry in the Philippines. But the current penalties
and enforcement policies do nothing to have an
impact on the business. As in many other countries,
the prostitutes are arrested, but not the clients,
managers, and others whose enormous profits make
this business so attractive. The punishment for
committing prostitution is a US$500 fine or twelve
years in jail. While this law, in effect for three
decades, applies to women dancing in the nude or in
scanty bikini tongs, a major element in the prostitution
trade, arrests are seldom made because of corruption
and bribery.

In order to reduce the negative moral and economic

effects of prostitution, government and some non-
government agencies are working together to
rehabilitate former prostitutes or entertainment girls
who retire or change their profession. The
governments Department of Social Welfare and
Development has programs to teach these ex-
prostitutes other work alternatives and technical skills
as a means to a decent living. A civic action and
rehabilitation group, Marriage Encounter, is also
training married former prostitutes to help them move
back into mainstream society and divert single
women from the sex trade by improving their personal
skills for future relationships and family life. But funds
and enthusiasm for such social programs are too
limited.

PROSTITUTION NEAR SUBIC BAY AND CLARK

AIR BASE

In Angeles City, a town outside Clark Air Base, U.S.

servicemen have been replaced by lonely old men
lured by young girls selling sex at very cheap prices.
Describing the scene in Angeles, Ages Chan wrote in
the Japan Times, Girls in the go-go bar wear tiny
white tops and short skirts. They dance on the tables
waiting for customers. Once they sit down with a
customer, the customers hands move all over their
bodies.

Describing the scene in the 1990s in Olongapo, a

town of 120,000 people outside Subic Bay, Edward
Gargan wrote in the New York Times, "When the sunk
sinks, the jukeboxes crank, men in T-shirts and jeans
straggle the bars, and scantily clad women scan the
tables for prospects. More often than not, a young
man will sidle up to a newcomer and ask, 'You want a
young girl? Fifteen only.'" When the base was open in
the 1980s, there were 16,000 prostitutes working in
Olongapo. Now there are only around 500.

Reporting from Angeles City, John M. Glionna wrote

in the Los Angeles Times, At a club called Koko
Yoko, balding men with bulging bellies sit at an
outdoor bar, sipping beers and leering at the young
girls who pass on the model's runway gone wrong
called Fields Avenue. Many of the girls weigh barely
90 pounds, their high heels pushing their almost
adolescent bodies at perverse angles. There are
cross-dressers fooling no one, calling out to men with
tattoos, Popeye forearms and gray hair on their
backs. "Lady boy!" they squeal. "Lady boy!" Some
men pass by with girls one-third their age, swinging
their hands together like a couple on a first date.
Others cavort with three girls at once, the women all
clutching their client like daughters competing for
Daddy's attention.

Fields Avenue, the main pedestrian drag in Angeles

City, is a legacy of the time when this row of run-down
bars was the romping ground of restless young
American airmen stationed at Clark Air Base. The
U.S. base closed in 1992, and the often-randy airmen
have gone with it. But the girls, the sex, the round-
the-clock raunchiness remain. Only the customers
have changed. A thriving sex tourism trade attracts
foreign customers by the thousands in search of
something they cannot find back home: girls young
enough to be their granddaughters selling sex for the
price of a burger and fries.

A young dancer in tight red hip-hugger pants and

matching sports bra acknowledges that Fields Avenue
may not be pretty, but the money is good. She rolls
her eyes at two overweight men who pass by looking
like large reptiles dressed in children's clothing. Sure,
the sex is disgusting, she says. But at least it's over
quickly. Outside Koko Yoko, the doorman, a 33-year-
old paraplegic, perches on a wheeled wooden pallet.
He says his father was an American who once served
at Clark, his mother a local girl. He contracted polio
when he was 11 and has worked here ever since. The
street, he says, takes care of him. Soon, an idle
stripper climbs onto his back, rubbing her crotch into
the back of his neck. All along Fields Avenue, the
come-on banners with their Web addresses advertise
good pay (up to $10 a day) for hostess jobs. But
applicants must speak Korean, Japanese or
Chinese.

SEX SCENE IN ANGELES CITY TODAY

John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times,

Once populated by men in their early 20s who
started each day with 100 push-ups, the place is now
home to older men who need help pushing
themselves out of bed in the morning. Most are bused
up from Manila, an hour away, on golf and sex
package deals. This is no quasi-innocent boys' night
out. Rather, it's a single-minded realm of weary-
looking loners on a resolute hunt that smacks of
feeding an addiction. Many are ex-military men
reliving former glories, Peter Fonda and Dennis
Hopper wannabes, some gathering at the local
American Legion post before embarking into the
night.

There is a one-armed man, a retiree with a walker

and another dapper gentleman who strolls along in a
dress shirt, twirling an umbrella, whistling a private
tune. Many head to the bars with the red-light special
called "The Early-Release": Buy your girl 10 drinks
and she's yours, no questions asked. Nobody asks
questions here. Nobody gives their name. Credit
cards are a joke; who wants to leave behind any
economic traces that they ever set foot here? ***

Nearby a saggy-faced Australian lights a cigarette.

He's been in Angeles City for about a month, his last
stop on a sex circuit from Bangkok to Manila after
getting laid off from his electrician's job in Sydney. In
Thailand, he says, the girls didn't speak the language.
Manila hookers were too streetwise, the bars too
spread out. But this is Easy Street. He can sit atop his
bar stool and ogle hundreds of passing girls fresh
from the countryside who perfect the tricks of their
trade before moving on to The Show in Manila. The
Australian signals a street vendor and buys some
knockoff Viagra. He says he prefers the girls working
one street over, who cost only 500 pesos, or about
$10, apiece. "Anything goes here," he says, lighting
another cigarette. He leans over to offer a bit of Fields
Avenue inside information: "You can get a young girl
here to do anything if you promise to marry her."
A balding man pulls up on his motorcycle, greeting
several other men loudly in German. They already
have their catch, and girls jump on the back as the
cycles roar off. At the Tourist Assistance Booth,
Odysius Garche says the older customers are better
behaved than the U.S. airmen were. "I just tell them:
'The girls are inside. Go make your own deal.'
"Nearby, a chubby American with glasses eats a hot
dog. He says he's a bar manager, but offers no
details. He came to Angeles City from California, to
follow up on a chat-room hookup. He ended up on
Fields Avenue, drinking late with the dancers, hearing
their stories. "This is clean fun," he says. "There's no
sex shows. These girls are not slaves. They have
minds of their own."

Behind him, women call out from the doors of bars

with names like the Doll House, Club Lancelot,
Treasure Island, Club Cambodia, the Blue Nile and
the Amsterdam. Suddenly, a group of
twentysomething men storms past, laughing and arm-
punching. The news spreads and girls pop their
heads out the doorways to catch a glimpse of boys
their own age. One calls after them with a deal she
hopes they can't refuse: "Free!" she says, laughing.

GROUP OF FORMER PROSTITUTES HELPS

PROSTITUTES IN THE PHILIPPINES

In 2011, the Philippines Inquirer reported: As the

night grows older, this part of the city becomes more
alive. Women in low-cut, body-hugging clothes start
appearing on the streets of Quezon Citys red light
district. Some make their move on potential
customers. Also in the area are other women dressed
more conservatively in jeans and shirt. They are not
around to earn money for the night. Belonging to
Bagong Kamalayan Collective Inc. (BKCI), they have
come to talk to their scantily clad sisters about their
rights and to try to inspire them to rebuild their
lives.Liza Gonzales, recounting the scene to the
Philippine Daily Inquirer, knows what life is like in the
red light district. She was once one of those scantily
clad women working in that neighborhood.

Most of the BKCI staff used to gimmick in Cubao

and Quezon Avenue, Gonzales said in a recent
interview. We want prostituted women to see that
they can have a stable livelihood even if they quit,
Gonzales said. Today, BKCIs original five members
have grown to 50. They have found a source of
income not just for themselves but for other victims of
prostitution. BKCI recently opened a cooperative
canteen. Hopefully our canteen becomes a big, big
restaurant so we can help more women, Gonzales
said in Filipino. The place is barely half the size of the
other eateries along a street in Quezon City, but BKCI
members talk about it with pride. What they have now
is a far cry from what they had when the Inquirer first
met the group in 2005. /*\

They had no canteen then. Engaged in food

catering, all they had were a few utensils for cooking
meals which they delivered to meetings of various
other advocacy groups. To reheat the dishes, they
would bring along a super kalan (liquefied petroleum
gas tank with a built-in burner). For a time, they also
offered laundry service, washing clothes with bare
hands. Having no weighing scale, they would go to a
nearby market to weigh their clients laundry. They
also ventured into small businesses, such as selling
homemade soap, but these didnt bring in much
money. Three years ago, their money problems
worsened. We didnt even have a centavo in the
bank, Gonzales said. /*\

There were times when they had no money to buy

food. When you have nothing to feed your children,
its tempting to turn to prostitution for fast money but
because of our good foundation, we remained strong.
We survived without going back, Gonzales said.
Even as they struggled to live, they still conducted
educational seminars and scoured red light districts in
Quezon City and elsewhere on the chance they might
help other women trapped in prostitution. Support
from allied NGOs and their strong belief that there is
life after prostitution kept them going, Gonzales
said. /*\

Eventually members learned skills from livelihood

training seminars. Some even attended baking
classes at Miriam College. Initially, they thought of
setting up a bakeshop. But they settled for a canteen
because the girls found it difficult to make bread,
Gonzales said. With their personal savings and
donations from CATW-AP and other supporters, the
group earlier this year finally managed to open their
9-square-meter canteen. Their profit and donations
help them pursue their mission, support their families
and send themselves and their children to school. /*\

Gonzales is the only founder left in the organization.

Carrying thermos, packets of instant coffee and
bread, BKCI members still pound the streets of red
light districts. Over coffee, they would talk with
prostitution victims about laws protecting womens
rights and other issues. Most of them are not aware
of their rights. When authorities take them to the
precinct, they assume that cases are already filed
against them even without any inquest, Gonzales
said. Afraid to stay behind bars, women simply give
cash and their cell phones or, worse, give cops sexual
favors in exchange for their freedom. /*\

BKCI and CATW-AP are lobbying for the passage of

the anti-prostitution bill, which shifts criminal liabilities
from prostituted persons to customers, pimps, brothel
and nightclub owners and law enforcement officers.
The measure has been pending in Congress for 11
years. Gonzales resents calling women in prostitution
sex workers or prostitutes. We call them prostituted
women because prostitution is not a job but a
violation of human rights. Gonzales said her group
did not force women to leave their trade. They have
to reach the point when they no longer want to be
there. We have healed our wounds, Gonzales said.
We may not be able to forgive those who abused us,
those who raped us. But to be able to heal, to go back
to the community and freely express ourselves and
fight for our rights, we feel blessed.

PROSTITUTES HELPED BY THE FORMER

PROSTITUTE GROUP

The Philippines Inquirer reported: Gina (not her real

name), one of the survivors that the BKCI had
plucked from the streets, recalled a time when she
could not even pay the rent for her familys apartment
and she had beg the landlord not to throw them out
into the streets. In those hard times, other members
lived in the CATW-AP office. One of them, Rem (also
a pseudonym), was attending high school and had to
sleep in the directors office, where CATW-AP
employees also worked.

Gina has five children who are all studying. Her eldest
is now in college. Rem, 25, said: Before, I could not
even imagine myself going back to school. It seemed
impossible. She is now pursuing a bachelor degree
in cooperatives at Polytechnic University of the
Philippines. Her sister, 20-year-old Rose (also not her
real name) and also a survivor from prostitution, is
now a fourth year high school student at Miriam
College for adult education.

The two sisters want to take up courses on social

development so they can better assist victims of sex
trafficking. With diplomas and newly acquired skills,
some members have left BKCI to focus on their own
lives. But others have remained because we need to
continue fighting for the rights of other victims of
prostitution and be their voice while they are still in
the trade, Gonzales said. Said Gina: I am most
fulfilled because I am no longer on the streets.