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Nepal’s entertainment and sex industries support a number
of peripheral businesses and workers. Landlords often charge
higher rents for entertainment venues than for other businesses,
particularly in high-rent areas such as Thamel. Few cabin
restaurants have kitchens, but depend on nearby restaurants
to cook snacks and meals if the customers desire them. Liquor
shops, bhatti pasals and cigarette vendors benefit from the flow
of customers late into the evening. Casinos benefit from the
added attraction of sex for Indian tourists. Numerous small
persons, including taxi drivers, street vendors and pimps, draw
income from the growing industry. On the black side of the
economy, interviews with both entertainment workers and
owners indicate that police, local hoodlums and youth cadres
of political parties benefit from extortion and payoffs from the
owners and workers of the entertainment industry. 58
by Indian travel agents and local casinos, hotels and (in the
past) the Nepal Tourism Board have indirectly offered sex as
well as gambling and mountain scenery to visitors. 61 Nepal
Tourism Year 2011 officially targets India and China for regional
tourism.
Formal data on the development of a sex tourism industry
are unavailable. Government, hotel owners and casino owners
are reluctant to discuss the issue. However, these stakeholders
are not ignorant of the immense money that Thailand and
other countries make from sex tourism, whether or not they
are aware of the social and health impact of such an industry.
Although covered in the local media, the growth and presence
of sex tourism in Nepal has not yet been brought into public
debate.
SEX TOURISM
The process of developing Nepal as a sex tourist destination
is an unspoken but important subject. Both international and
local media have sensationalized an emergent sex tourism
industry in Nepal with the usual misconception that all sex
tourists (as well as all paedophiles) are Westerners. There are
strong indications that Nepal is developing as a sex tourism
destination for India. Informal observation in 2008 noted young
Indian men flying to Kathmandu from Delhi for holidays of
gambling and ‘bar-hopping’. 59 Other sources have noted that
Nepal is becoming a destination for sex tourists from
Bangladesh. 60 Some package tours for young males, promoted
2010 Terre des hommes www.tdh.ch 42