African men imported for Thai sex industry

BANGKOK (AFP): African men are being transported to Thailand to work in the capital’s commercial sex industry, reports said earlier today. African male prostitutes have become “fairly popular among gays and wild older women,” the Nation daily said, quoting a Thai man who frequently purchases the Africans’ services. Transported to Thailand from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and the Sudan, the men enter the country on a tourist visa and overstay their limit to work illegally in the sex industry along Bangkok’s main Sukhumvit Road, the Nation said. “The sex workers wink at potential customers as a signal of their availability,” it said, adding they charge from 2,000 to 6,000 baht (48 to 143 dollars). An AFP correspondent last week saw several men believed to hail from Africa trolling for clients on the sidewalks of a Bangkok red light district. Police frequently raid Bangkok’s infamous sex districts and haul away alleged prostitutes and some brothel owners. But few prostitutes wind up in the capital’s jails and many are soon back on the streets.