The Philippine Online Chronicles

The director of Human Life Internation (HLI)-Pilipinas, a faith-based organization, said he believes the Philippines has become a favored destination for male tourists seeking commercial sex.

CBCP News reported that HLI-Pilipinas director Rene Bullecer, a medical doctor and expert in AIDS, said the Philippines could soon compete with Thailand as a target for “sex-starved tourists.”

This remark followed the comment made by US ambassador Harry Thomas during a Court of Appeals workshop that “up to 40% of foreign men who come [to the Philippines] come for sexual tourism.” Doubt has since been cast upon the pronouncement due to the perceived lack of evidence, with senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Vicente Sotto asking Thomas to explain his statement.

Bullecer, meanwhile, admonished Filipinos to be careful as “next to Thailand, the Philippines — a Third World country in Asia — is a very favorite target of the sex-starved tourists coming from both the East and the West”. He said that with the millions of HIV/AIDS cases in Thailand, there is now a shift in direction among tourists looking for sex.

He believes, however, that there is more to Thomas's report.

“As a person who runs an anti-AIDS program in behalf of the Catholic Church, and at the same time in the defense of life in all its stages, I could sense that there is something deeper (behind the statement) than just for the sake of scaring us,” he said.

He conjectured that the statement may be a “safe justifcation” for a “real need to push a more aggressive safe sex program via all-out condom promotion.”

Bullecer also suggested there may be a connection between Thomas's remark and the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which, among other objectives, aim to provide universal access to reproductive health.

Bullecer also cited the “billions of pesos” coming from different funding organizations, many of which, he claimed, are US-based.

“Could this be tied to House Bill 4244 (the Congress version of the Reproductive Health bills) and to fast-track the full realization of MDG in this country?” he asked.