gay sauna raids continue
Monday, December 30, 2002
It seems that saunas are the flavour of the month for the Bangkok police - another gay sauna was raided on Friday night and most have now increased the lighting and decreased the privacy of their "private" areas.
Friday's raid at Babylon was similar to the recent raids at Farose and Chakran, with the police accompanied by government officials and the press. Details of the raid (or at least something remotely related to the facts), including pictures of patrons still in their towels, were published in the local press (Thai and English) and shown on Thai TV.
On this occasion however the foreigners (and this is Babylon and it is the weekend before New Year so there were a lot of them!) were not just hustled out the door but were apparently included in the urine drug testing. According to news reports 20 people tested "positive", though there are never any followup stories to say how many of these were false positives!
One message is very clear from the recent raids - don't do drugs. Sexual orientation is irrelevant, both gay and straight venues are being raided for drugs, in Bangkok and in other areas.
Other messages are less clear - many people are privately horrified at how the raids have been carried out and how reporting has been handled by the press, but this is Thailand so so far there has not been a lot of public outrage expressed or venue owners marching on Parliament House!
There are no straight equivalents of the saunas (gay and straight massage parlours are a different kettle of fish), so it is difficult to support a claim that the raids are specifically anti-gay, but there is no prostitution and usually not a significant underage or drug problem at such venues so it is difficult to understand why they would become targets, unless casual sex in what is essentially a private club setting offends public morality, and under the new social order it obviously does.
Regardless, the police and government have been shown to be doing something to maintain the new social order, some people will have been scared away from the saunas or from Thailand, and most will be getting on with things as normal, getting used to the new rules until they are replaced by newer "new" rules and the doors go back on the cubicles and the lights go down again at the saunas.
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