According to a recent classification published by Tour Operator Expedia,
Portuguese people who are known for deserting restaurants before paying the
bill and can be considered Italian "cousins" in this regard, rank even before
Italians.
Commonplaces apart, there are few Italians that do not reassemble to the
mentioned cliché: one of them is Giorgio Sampec particularly fond of tourist
activity since he used to work as a doorkeeper in a camping side at Garda Lake
(Italy), a kind of "type voyager" quit and discreet.
Nonetheless, since the interview he released to national satiric Tv program
Iene and a tapped telephone discussions where he was heard to boast of certain
brave deeds he had carried out in some exotic countries, he has become the
first Italian citizen to be condemned for sexual-related crimes committed
outside national territory.
Milan judiciary accused him of being involved in 14 cases of sexual-intercourse
with minors between 2001 and 2005 in Thailand; he has been sentenced to a 14
years seclusion in addition to a monetary penalty of 65,000 euros. If the
sentence is confirmed by the Appeal judge's decision, he will remain however an
isolated case.
Sex Tourism is a significant issue in terms of national resources for the so
called "Third World Countries"; some governments, affected by constant lack of
democracy and control, consider the indiscriminate exploitation of national
resources as a life-insurance business.
There are some governments who, welcoming particularly well-off tourists, are
quite willing to turn a blind eye on exploitation of prostitution while
assisting, at the same time, to the swelling of the State budget.
That's why the amount of sex tourists has reared in the past few years while
these people continue to frolic undisturbed across insular Asian territories,
Eastern Europe and South America with local authorities keeping an apathetic
eye. Nonetheless, the great flood of money flowing from tourists pockets ends
up directly in the hands of organized crime: sex tourists are in search of what
ven those countries allow legal prostitution prohibit: having sex with
children. Although minors prostitution is outlowed even in most lenient
countries, it can however becomes a source of easy money for mafia groups of
every kind.
In Brazil an estimated 500,000 sex tourists visit the country every year, 70
thousands of whom are Italians. In 2004 crowds of thousands of Portuguese,
Italian, German and US citizens visited the city of Fortaleza causing a general
increase of 13% in the tourist sector if compared with the previous year.
Concerned with the unordinary surge, a Parliamentary Inquiry Committee has
found out that almost the whole tourist offer of Fortaleza lies in cheap sex
service along with low costs flights, inexpensive accommodation and
all-inclusive tourist packages.
In 2004 Italian Police Authorities applied for the first time the 269 law of
Criminal Code allowing the detention of Italian tourist operators responsible
of minors sexual exploitation. Some time later in 2005, in occasion of the
Social Forum of Porto Alegre, the Antiglobal Activists, as they are named by
the Press, added an additional chapter to the long list of gloomy consequences
resulted from Neoliberalism: the Child Sex Tourism.
It was Brazil to start the international campaign "Stop Sexual Tourism" and
thought it can't rely on political willingness, the so called Child and the
Prostitution Tourism Watch like many other ideas originated from the
international movement, can now count on the activity of its Net.
An online archive is being developed and includes conventions, master's thesis
and dissertations, tails and plays, accounts of successful experiences against
prostitution, in a word everything involved with sexual tourism. It is an Open
Source Archive accessible to everyone who want to get information and hopefully
take action.
The Watch will also make soon available on the site any report by voyagers
aimed to identify, across the global tourist network, the traffickers of
prostituted minors and children, tourist agencies and operators, air companies,
hotel keepers, taxi-drivers, restaurants and discos owners or public trustees
who get black bribes for turning a blind eye. A tourist, if sufficiently
conscious of the phenomenon, can sometime make a lot more than the Interpol.
