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Director:Wolfgang Luck
Camera:Rainer Friedrich
Sound:Steven Briggs
Editing:Karl-Heinz Satzger
Production Company:a&o buero
First Broadcasted:May 29, 2006

“The Return of the Sex Tourists” (Die Rückkehr der Sextouristen)

Betrifft, SWR, 45 minutes

This film was awarded at the TOURA D’OR 2006 in Berlin.

Every year 500.000 german men fly for cheap sex around half of the world. Most of the sex tourists come to Thailand. When in december 2004 the tsunami destroyed the red-light disctrict in Phuket, the island administration promised to focus from now on on „green tourism“. We packed to observe this U-turn in Phuket. What we could experience was the uncontrolled rebuilding of the sex industry. Hardly were the corpses cleared from the beach the sex tourists came back. Traffickers have exchanged the prostitutes died by the tsunami by illegaly channeled bar girls from Vietnam and Cambodia. The young women report openly about their bleak everyday life and their dealings with the mostly drunk german retirees. And those tell without any dread, why they buy girls that are 40 years younger than themselves. The film also shows how as a „side-effect“ children are forced to work in prostitution. The film describes the case of a previously convicted german child abuser, who was arrested in Pattaya. In Germany this man finally gets let off with probation because of slopiness in the process.