Panther Red

On 29 July 2008, a publication called Eureka Street ran an article by Harry Nicolaides, an Australian writer then resident in Thailand.  Nicolaides had visited Tachilek, a town on the Thai-Burmese border where child pornography was openly sold.  Neither the Burmese authorities or the Thai border guards showed the slightest interest in putting a stop to this trade.  Here is the link to Nicolaides’ article.  He describes a market in videos documenting the binding, rape, and torture of thousands of children, most of them apparently in Europe or North America, most of the rest in Asia.  Men from those regions travel freely through the area, not searched by Thai border guards. 

On 29 August 2008, Thai officials arrested Nicolaides and charged him with lèse-majeste.  A novel he had published four years before, which had sold a grand total of seven copies, contained a brief passage about a fictional Crown Prince; Thai authorities claimed that this passage was insulting to the actual Crown Prince.  On 19 January 2009, Nicolaides was sentenced to three years in prison.  On 21 February 2009, the king of Thailand granted Nicolaides a pardon and sent him home to Melbourne. 

The quote below comes from an interview published in the Greek-Australian newspaper Neos Kosmos on 22 February 2009:

Harry admits that an article by him published in Eureka Street, a Melbourne based publication, alleging that Thai police turned a blind eye to the importation of child pornography from Burma, may have impacted on his situation, “It may have put me on the radar, I knew I was always provocative but at worst if anything at all happened I thought I would be deported, never jailed.”

While Nicolaides was in prison, none of his defenders mentioned a word about Tachilek in public, apparently for fear that it would alienate the Thais and hurt his chances of release.  Now that he is out, the time has come to say something about it.  To whom can it be said? 

Organizations Fighting Child Pornography

Children’s Rights International: A page of  22 links to organizations involved in this effort.

Organizations Fighting Child Abuse

Organizations Fighting Human Trafficking