Singapore PM: Dream to become reality as city-state wins bid for 2010 Youth Olympics

By DERRICK HO,
Associated Press Writer AP - Friday, February 22
SINGAPORE

Thousands of Singaporeans cheered and waved the national flag Thursday after their city-state won the right to host the 2010 Youth Olympic Games, and the Prime Minister called the result a "dream that will become reality".

"It's a great honor and privilege for all of us, for Singapore and every Singaporean," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a gathering of officials and more than 5,000 students from 90 schools decked in the national color red, on a large field in downtown Singapore.

"We dared to dream, we worked hard to pursue our dream despite the odds, and now the dream will become a reality."

Under a shower of confetti, dozens of students dressed in the Olympic colors danced on the steps of the City Hall following the IOC's announcement that was made in Switzerland and seen in Singapore via a live broadcast on two large screens.

"For the first time, the Olympics name will be in Southeast Asia, and in Singapore," Lee said. "We will be the focus of a new era of sports development for Singapore, for Southeast Asia and for the Olympic movement."

Following the IOC's announcement, the crowd erupted in cheers as students leapt for joy and pumped their fists in the air.

"I felt ecstasy. There was sheer happiness. So much hard work has been put into this and it has paid off," said Jamie Coates, 15, a British-born Singaporean sports school student who was dressed in a white and gold Greek robe, marking the origin of the Olympics.

In a postal ballot of IOC members, Singapore received 53 votes against 44 for rival candidate city Moscow.

The Southeast Asian city-state, unlikely ever to host a full-scale Olympic Games due to size restrictions, has already begun construction of a venue that will be used as an Olympic Village for the 2010 Youth Games.

The 5,000-bed university residence, costing US$423 million (�287 million) and located within 30 minutes of all sports venues, will be completed in February 2010.

Pills force early adulthood on minors in brothels

By Poornima Swaminathan  / February 22, 2008  

Police deny knowledge of the practice, term it 'a shocking trend'  

"I hate looking at my body. My chest and hips have swelled in the last year," says 14-year-old Mina (name changed).  

Like hundreds of minors in the city of Mumbai every year, Mina was rescued from the clutches of pimps in Bhiwandi, near Thane, last year. 

Intrigued by her statement, NGOs have investigated and found a startling new trend in the flesh trade. Revelations by minor girls rescued from prostitution suggest that they are injected with growth hormones or forced to pop oral pills that quicken their physical growth.  

Brothel keepers apparently administer the pills or hormone injections (oestrogen, testosterone, and steroids) as food supplements. A few months later, the girls show abnormal growth, particularly on the chest and hips.  

Some even develop facial hair, according to the Rescue Foundation, an NGO which helped to free some of the girls.  

Most the girls who have been rescued from brothels hail from West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and the northeastern states of India. Others are trafficked from neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh.  

"Suddenly I had hair on my chin and my hips were bigger. I was feeling uncomfortable with my body," says 15-year-old Nina (name changed), who was rescued in November 2007.  

During her counselling sessions, Nina confided that she popped in pills regularly, unaware of their harmful effects.  

Social workers say there is a growing demand for 'fresh' girls from an ever-increasing young clientele. The rates are also higher for minors, which encourages brothel keepers to exploit them further. "If the girls grow physically, they begin to appear like adults. The brothel owner does this to save himself during police raids," says Triveni Acharya, founder of the Rescue Foundation. She says the girls who are administered growth hormones also develop "manly" voices.  

The Mumbai Police, who regularly conduct raids to crack down on prostitution, particularly minor prostitution, say they have not come across this trend. "If it is true, it is a shocking trend," says a senior officer from the Social Service Branch. "We will henceforth keep an eye out for such cases."

Harassed in India: Women face an uphill battle in a culture that devalues females  

By Raymond Thibodeaux / February 22, 2008  

Lauren Olsen (right) and her friend, Shelly Trivedi, both 16, say they sometimes find it difficult walking in some areas of Delhi, where men ogle, heckle and even grope women.

In its global campaign to attract foreign tourists, India's "Incredible India" ads feature a young woman enjoying her morning yoga session on a secluded beach.  

In reality, what female tourists experience too often is this: persistent ogling and heckling by Indian men.  

"At times I find it hard traveling around as a woman in Delhi. I've been groped twice in public," said Amanda Burrell, 36, a blue-eyed, blond-haired documentary filmmaker from England on vacation in India. "I think Indian women have it much worse."  

If the Indian male ever had a reputation for being suave and sophisticated, that image has hit rock bottom. In recent weeks a spate of attacks against women and a new study showing rape as the fastest-growing crime in New Delhi are painting a less flattering picture.  

In India, the fact that men are being held under such heightened scrutiny is a sign of changing social rules between men and women as the country modernizes. 

While more and more Indian women move into the high-tech workforce or rise to key government posts in the new India, some analysts say many women appear to be losing the battle to overcome centuries-old cultural attitudes that tend to devalue the role of women and keep them dependent on men.  

"Many of India's social values have not kept pace with the development of its modern cities," said Shaibal Gupta, a social analyst for the Asian Development Research Institute, a nongovernmental agency based in the northeastern Indian state of Bihar.  

India's predominantly Hindu culture is skewed in favor of boys and men, say some social experts. In India's deep-rooted system of dowry, a bride's family pays the groom for marrying her - a custom that has been outlawed but only loosely enforced.  

"Most Indian men don't have opportunities for intimate contact with women until their mid-20s," Gupta said. "For some of them, their only exposure to women in a sexual context has been in the virtual realms of Bollywood and Internet porn sites."  

For many women in India, the result can be terrifying.  

In an incident that rattled the country, dozens of young men taunted and groped two girls as they left a New Year's Eve party at a popular five-star hotel in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay. An Indian newspaper photographer called the police and recorded the melee in a shocking series of photos that ran on the front page of almost every major newspaper in India, launching a flurry of editorials.  

In a televised interview, the outraged chief of India's ministry for women and child development called for the death penalty for those convicted of rape.  

There have been several high-profile assaults recently against foreign women in India. A British freelance journalist allegedly was raped by the owner of a guesthouse where she was staying in northern India. A 28-year-old American tourist was groped by a Hindu priest while visiting a temple in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan.  

Several Western embassies have issued warnings on the dangers women often face in India.  

"I get stared at, and sometimes men approach me and say things. But I've lived in India long enough that I've almost stopped paying attention to it," said Lauren Olsen, 16, a student at an American school in Delhi.  

"It can be difficult being a girl here," she said. 

Thailand: No sex on Valentine's for teens  

By Nopporn Wong-Anan / February 15, 2008  

Bangkok - Alarmed by polls showing one in four Thai teens celebrated St. Valentine's Day by having sex last year, police swooped on motels, malls and parks to ensure youths behaved themselves on the "Day of Love".

The annual campaign to ensure good behavior on February 14 saw city officials turn on all lights at public parks in the capital Bangkok, while parents were urged to make sure their teenagers come home early.  

Police and "student inspectors" from the Education Ministry were checking discrete "curtain" motels to make sure youths under the legal age of 18 were not using them for amorous interludes.  

"We sent patrols to check out public parks, restaurants and shopping malls, which are the starting points for potential sexual activities that will be done at home or motels," Bangkok police spokesman Suporn Pansuea said.  

Thailand's moral guardians are taking action after an Assumption University poll showed 27 percent of 2,400 Bangkok teenagers surveyed said they might have sex on Thursday.  

Despite Bangkok's reputation as one of the world's sex industry centres, predominately Buddhist Thailand is generally a conservative country.  

This year's St Valentine's Day celebrations have been tempered by a sluggish economy after two years of political strife and a 2006 coup, and nationwide mourning for King Bhumibol Adulyadej's sister who died in January.  

Rose vendors have complained about sagging sales because people have less disposable income.  

"I don't think we'll have robust sales this Valentine's Day," Den Yarum, a florist at Bangkok's main flower market, told the Thai-language Daily News.  

A number of annual high-profile events, such as weddings conducted on mountain cliffs, underwater or in hot-air balloons, have been cancelled or postponed due to the 100-day mourning period for Princess Galyani Vadhana.  

Bangkok's "District of Love", a city office where superstitious couples flock to register their marriages on Valentine's Day, were open for business, but the ceremonies were low key.  

"People are still mourning Princess Galyani Vadhana so the activities will be simple, with an emphasis on her love for the people," district chief Pravit Panviroj said.  

Reuters and staff

Taiwanese mother forced young daughters into prostitution

 February 15, 2008

Tainan - A mother in Tainan County, southern Taiwan, was found to have allegedly forced her three young daughters to serve as prostitutes for more than two years. The woman and five patrons were arrested and questioned by police just before Chinese New Year, local news media reported yesterday. 

The illegal operation was exposed after the eldest daughter, now aged 13, told her school teacher several days before Chinese New Year's Eve on Feb. 6.  

The student said that since October 2006, her mother had forced her and her two younger sisters to serve as prostitutes, with patrons mostly men aged over 60. At the time, the three sisters were aged 6, 7, and 10.  

Following initial investigations, police found that men paid NT$500 to NT$1,000 for each incidence, and some patrons asked to be served by the three sisters simultaneously.  

The police have already located 8 suspects involved in the cases, and have taken six into custody after interrogations, including the mother and five patrons.  

The Tainan County Government has stepped in to settle the housing and living arrangements for the three sisters.

Despite Kabukicho's sex trade going limp, love hotels start 2008 with a bang  

By Ryann Connell / February 6, 2008  

Kabukicho -- Japan's biggest, brashest, raunchiest entertainment district -- suffered a slow, boring entrance to 2008, with one notable exception: love hotels, Shukan Shincho says. 

"It's really sad," a Kabukicho restaurant employee tells Shukan Shincho. "There wasn't a soul around on New Year's Day. About the only places in Kabukicho that attracted anyone over the New Year holidays were game centers and pachinko parlors."  

Rumors have recently sprung up that Japan's once-spurting "ejaculation industry" is well and truly on the wane.  

"Ever since (Shintaro) Ishihara became governor of Tokyo, policing of Kabukicho has become really tight. The number of storefront sex business there has dropped dramatically and now there are only loads of stores selling adult DVDs or booths offering advice on sex services in their place," the restaurant worker says. "The whole atmosphere of the district has changed and virtually no-one comes here for sex anymore."  

Once a Kabukicho staple, soapland brothels in particular are feeling washed up.  

"A whole series of famous ramen noodle restaurants have opened up in one alley near all the soaplands," a Kabukicho insider tells the weekly. "People line up to get into the restaurants, which makes it a bit too embarrassing for guys to have to walk past them all to go into the brothels."  

Still, not every business in Kabukicho is hurting. In fact, while not as many people may be paying for Kabukicho's carnal pleasures, that doesn't mean they're not getting them in the district.  

"(Love hotels) have gone from being just places where you'd go for sex into becoming havens of pleasure. Competition among the hotels is absolutely fierce and consumers get the benefit. That's not just in things like reasonable rates and longer sessions, but services like room service menus with over 100 items and orders accepted 24 hours a day, surround-sound audio systems in the rooms, online karaoke sets and then free provision of toiletries and other items for stays like pajamas. There are even some love hotels with meals prepared by famous chefs," the Kabukicho insider tells Shukan Shincho.  

"Some Kabukicho love hotels have started putting up sandwich boards in front of their establishments to advertise the services they're providing. Some couples even spent the entire New Year period in Kabukicho love hotels."

Aged 18-20? Been sexually abused by a parent? Not our problem, say Japanese authorities  

By Ryann Connell  / February 6, 2008  

Not long after she had finished elementary school, the father of a now 18-year-old woman identifies only as Miss A began "visiting" her bedroom and sexually abusing her. 

His unwanted ministrations continued for years. She graduated high school in the spring of last year but failed to gain entrance into a university, so stayed at home to study.  

"He stopped coming in for a while, but then started all over again," Miss A tells Yomiuri Weekly journalist and confidante Miho Nagata.  

When the teen's mother was due to go away for a weekend, she was terrified that her father would be able to do as he liked with her, so Nagata stepped in to try and help. But after the journalist dragged the girl away from her incestuous father's clutches, she was horrified to discover Japan's support system places the young woman in limbo -- simply because she's aged 18.  

Japanese are legally minors until turning 20, until which time their parents have the legal right and obligation to supervise and educate them. However, laws aimed at protecting children from abusive parents only apply to those under 18. Despite the years of her father's abuse, the Tokyo Child Consultation Center refused to help her.  

"If she's 18, her case can't be picked up by one of our centers," the Yomiuri Weekly quotes a spokesman saying.  

Other public authorities were equally unhelpful.  

"If she really was being abused, why did she wait until she was 18 until telling someone?" the weekly quotes the ever-helpful police from the country area where Miss A grew up as saying.  

Public health authorities in the same city expressed similar doubts about her situation. Women's shelter officials in Tokyo were equally unresponsive, saying they generally dealt only with female victims of physical rather than sexual violence.  

"It would be the first time we've ever had to deal with a case where a woman was being sexually abused by a member of her family," the weekly quotes a shelter employee saying.  

Miss A's age even worked against her when it came to seeking mental health care for the anguish she had suffered.  

"If she's under 20, we can't admit her to the hospital without her parents' permission," a spokesman for a mental health hospital says.  

Parental permission was highly unlikely to be forthcoming considering the circumstances surrounding Miss A's case, and the fact that her mother and father were constantly ringing or mailing her and demanding she return home. The police also came after her when her parents filed a missing person's report and demanded she be returned to their side.  

Eventually, Miss A sought refuge in a place the Japanese call a Woman's Dormitory. These places were initially set up in the 1950s to house and rehabilitate prostitutes after Japan outlawed prostitution. Many of the current residents are also the original inhabitants, and teenage Miss A struggled to live in the communal dorms with the old women.  

After most authorities told her they were unable to deal with her case, one welfare worker helpfully suggested to Miss A that she could always go and live in an Internet caf?, the current favorite refuge of many financially strapped Japanese. Police, however, advised the teen to return to the home of the parents who had prompted her to seek sanctuary in the first place.  

In the end, Miss A -- shocking those who had tried to help her -- did, in fact, go back to her home. Experts on abuse say it's a common pattern among victims. They also say it's common for many sexually abused children to stay silent about their ordeal until turning 18 and sliding into limbo in Japan.  

"We often hear of cases where the victim has actually waited until turning 18 before they tell anyone what has been happening to them," Yuko Taniga, head of Kirara -- an NPO that helps sex abuse victims -- tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Unlike neglect or physical violence, it's very hard for incest victims to tell others about the abuse they've been subjected to. For many victims, incest starts before they know what sex is about, and they can think the same thing happens in every family. There are some incest victims who so enjoy the pleasure of sex that they can't turn it down, even if a relative is forcing it on them. The shame of gaining sexual pleasure makes it all the harder to talk about. There are more than a few minors over 18 who suffer in this way because the Child Welfare Law can't protect them."  

Changes to the law in 2004 do allow abused children over 18 but under 20 to apply to a family court to have their parents' guardianship over them declared void. However, it's a step few youngsters are willing to take.  

"Even if they are abusive, for children parents are still parents," Kirara's Taniga says. "There are hardly any children who would sue to have their parent's guardianship over them removed."

That leaves few options for youngsters like Miss A who are being abused but are too old to seek refuge through child protection services and too young to be legally treated as adults."Abuse victims with nowhere to go are often forced into sex businesses if they're female, or homelessness if they're male, Tetsuro Tsuzaki, a professor at Hanazono University in Kyoto tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Laws should at least be changed so that children's homes can help people until they turn 20."

South Korea arrests 24,000 in prostitution crackdown

November 14, 2007

Seoul - South Korean authorities caught nearly 24,000 prostitutes, pimps or clients in a two-month crackdown on the sex trade, the National Police Agency said last week.

Most the 23,626 caught -- of which about 19,900 were clients -- were fined, an officer at the anti-prostitution bureau told AFP, while 32 people accused of more serious offences were formally arrested and detained pending trial, the agency said.

Clients faced a maximum fine of three million won (3,315 dollars) and brothel owners up to 10 years in jail or 100 million won in fines.

"It was our third special crackdown on prostitution this year. The next one will begin in late December," the officer said of the latest operation, which began in August.

It was one of a series of police crackdowns since a new anti-prostitution law with tougher penalties was passed in 2004. Last year alone 35,000 clients were prosecuted.

The anti-prostitution drive has resulted in a sharp increase in incidents of South Koreans involved in the foreign sex trade. The government plans to revise the law to punish citizens caught buying sex abroad.

Ladies first in Japanese love hotels

Japanese Love Hotels: A Cultural History, by Sarah Chaplin. London/New York: Routledge, 2007, 242 pp. with photos, figures and tables, £85 (cloth)

By Donald Richie /. August 30, 2007

The love-hotel industry is one of Japan's most profitable. It accounts for more than ¥4 trillion a year, a figure nearly four times than that of the profit of Toyota Motors, double that of the anime market, and a trillion yen more than the annual takings of the Japan Racing Association.

Supporting this are 30,000 love hotels nationwide providing places for the 500 million visits that take place each year. Some 1,370,000 couples use a love hotel daily (1 percent of the total population of 127 million people on any given day), and one research project has calculated that half of all sex in Japan takes place in a love hotel, and that consequently a large part of the country's offspring is conceived in one.

This is because a large percentage of the patrons are married to each other. It has been estimated that customers fall into three categories: married, just dating, and adulterous. Their demands, however, are all the same - couples (married to each other or not) seeking space dedicated to sexual intimacy on a short-term basis, away from their crowded, nosy homes.

Other countries have their love-hotel equivalents - South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines - but these are not often of the same caliber as Japan's. Here the love-hotel establishment is not only geared to provide security and quiet, but also to create an atmosphere that is romantic (even fantastic), as other-worldly as Disneyland but at the same time stuffed with various handy gadgets.

Love-hotel excesses are well known, though now less evident since the 1985 revision to the Law Regulating Businesses Affecting Public Morals. This put an end to the large mirrors and big, round dendo (electric) beds that moved of their own accord. The contemporary love hotel is now much more kawaii (cute) than kinky.

Among the the reasons offered for this is that there has been something of a power shift in love-hotel choice. It used to be the male half that decided. Back then the places had hopeful macho monikers - Empire, Rex, King. Then the female half began to choose. Love hotels started calling themselves "fashion hotels" or "boutique hotels," and began to have lavish lobbies with theme-shops, colors like beige and lavender, and decor like Laura Ashley.

This change can be documented in the Meguro Emperor (still in Meguro), which began in 1973 as a he-man fort before it slowly metamorphosed into a romantic Disneyland castle. The interior has been several times revised to segue from male- to female-friendly. Even the name has changed. It is now Gallery Hotel.

In most love hotels "macho" kanji has been replaced by "feminine" hiragana, trendy katakana or, more often, romaji, that romanized script that carries no male/female associations at all.

The fashion hotel has grown ultra discrete (no one sees you once you are inside; in fashion motels, your license plates are hidden and there are no windows) and the erotic becomes the exotic, the risky becomes riskless, and the bed is seen as more trophy than taboo.

In her learned and entertaining book on the anthropology of the love hotel Sarah Chaplin follows the ups and downs of her subject and is particularly good in connecting its changes with those within the larger public. From the hovels of the late 1950s, almost entirely associated with adultery and prostitution, we have proceeded to the present pleasure palaces of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and almost everywhere else.

The entrances of such places used to resemble those of public toilets (a bafflement that allowed entry but discouraged voyeurism, and which one critic called "a purely pragmatic answer to a basic physical need.") Not now. Privacy otherwise ensured, we scan the modish room-menu, take a look around the shop and note the brand-name goods for sale, and then proceed to a bedroom in all ways more lavish than our own.

Since Chaplin is an academic, a number of authorities are evoked and acknowledged, but her style remains lively and readable. Remarking on the dispatch necessary of those cleaning the room and changing the sheets in the five minutes after an occupancy, she quotes that one might liken the process to a pit crew of a Formula One racing team's.

Here then is everything you would want to know about one of Japan's most significant architectural achievements, one which is also certainly its most lucrative.