[m2c] 16,000 Victims of Child Sexual Exploitation in Mexico

[usman x]

http://www.ipsnews.net

16,000 Victims of Child Sexual Exploitation

by Emilio Godoy
Aug 13, 2007

MEXICO CITY, Aug 13 (IPS) - The child pornography and commercial 
sexual exploitation industry enjoys total impunity in the Mexican 
capital, according to a report by the Mexico City Human Rights 
Commission.

The "special report on commercial sexual exploitation of children in 
the Federal District" confirms that there are at least 20 spots in 
Mexico City where these illegal activities flourish, under the 
protection of corrupt elements in the police force.

Although there are no figures on the extent of the phenomenon in the 
capital, an estimated 16,000 girls and boys are victims of sexual 
exploitation in this country of 108 million people.

Emilio Álvarez Icaza, head of the local Human Rights Commission, 
complained about the lack of strategies to clamp down on the problem.

"The state is largely absent in the question of commercial sexual 
exploitation of children," Álvarez Icaza recently told the press. "We 
have compiled all of the reports that we requested, and in essence 
what we found is that there are no specific programmes or actions at 
the local level."

International organisations fighting child sex tourism say Mexico is 
one of the leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation, along with 
Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Brazil.

The global child sex trade, including prostitution, pornography and 
trafficking for sexual purposes, is a multi-billion dollar business.

According to the Federal Preventive Police, it takes a pedophile an 
average of 15 days to have sexual relations with a minor after 
"meeting" the adolescent or child over the Internet.

Another chilling statistic is that 95 percent of Mexico City?s 13,000 
street children have already had at least one sexual encounter with 
an adult.

Many girls and boys are lured to Mexico City from small towns or 
rural areas by criminal networks, through false promises of domestic 
work or other jobs.

The number of child porn web sites climbed from 72,000 in January 
2004 to an estimated 100,000 in 2006.

The Commission?s report is "a powerful wake-up call to establish 
local public policies on the matter," wrote Miguel Ángel Granados, a 
columnist with the local newspaper Reforma.

"A reading of the passages that describe the main zones in the 
Federal District (of Mexico City, where child prostitution, 
pornography, sex tourism and trafficking are found) and their 
characteristics makes you shudder, especially the accounts of the 
degradation to which thousands of defenceless people are subjected, 
because they are children," he wrote.

In its Global Monitoring Report on the Status of Action against the 
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, the international network 
ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of 
Children for Sexual Purposes) warns that child sex tourists are 
increasingly visiting Mexico.

Drawn by web sites, many come from countries like the United States, 
Germany and the Netherlands.

But the problem is not limited to Mexico City. Commercial child 
sexual exploitation is also found in tourist resorts like Acapulco on 
the Pacific and Cancún on the Caribbean, as well as in cities and 
towns on the borders with the United States and Guatemala.

In the impoverished southern state of Chiapas, children are sold for 
as little as 100 to 200 dollars, according to human rights groups. 
That area is considered one of the worst places in the world in terms 
of child prostitution.

Mexico committed itself to combating the phenomenon when it backed 
the final declaration of the First World Congress against Commercial 
Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996.

In Latin America, only Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, 
Argentina, Brazil and Chile have national action plans to fight 
commercial sexual exploitation of children.

The Mexico City legislature is preparing to approve reforms to the 
local penal code in order to crack down on child pornography, sex 
tourism, labour exploitation and trafficking.

In February, the Senate passed reforms to the law against organised 
crime and the penal code, in order to make child sexual exploitation, 
sex tourism and pornography specific crimes.

Mexican society cannot claim to be ignorant of how widespread is the 
sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, and how fast the 
phenomenon is growing, argued Granados.

Journalist Lydia Cacho exposed a child sex ring in her 2005 book 
"Demons of Eden", which contains testimony from minors in Cancún who 
were sexually abused by adults who also photographed and videotaped 
them engaging in sexual acts and sold the images over the Internet.

Cacho was arrested and charged with criminal libel. The charges were 
brought by a textile magnate mentioned by minors and other sources 
interviewed for Cacho's book.

UNICEF, the U.N. children?s agency, estimates that around two million 
children around the world are sexually exploited through prostitution 
and pornography, which is the third most lucrative illegal industry 
in the world after drug trafficking and weapons dealing. (END/2007)

-- 
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted 
with enslavement." Lee Maracle
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