Don't! Buy! Thai!
Encyclopedia
Don't! Buy! Thai! was a campaign initiated in the early 1990s by child welfare
advocate
and author
Andrew Vachss
to boycott
goods and services produced in Thailand
until its government introduced formal and practical reforms to significantly curtail the prostitution of children
.
The organization of Don't! Buy! Thai! was willfully informal, with promoters refusing donations.
The campaign had great difficulty attracting attention from television, radio, and print media, so discussion was conducted largely on the Internet
. Online, it came under vociferous attack by Sean Parlaman
, who presented himself as a crusader against the prostitution of children. Parlaman variously accused the Don't! Buy! Thai! campaigners of being fundamentalist Christians, right-wing bigots, and pedophiles
.
In 2000, frustrated by the lack of traction and noting that the prostitution of children to sex tourists had become less concentrated in Thailand, Vachss and most of the involved abandoned the boycott.
Child welfare
Child protection is used to describe a set of usually government-run services designed to protect children and young people who are underage and to encourage family stability...
advocate
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
Andrew Vachss
Andrew Vachss
Andrew Henry Vachss is an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths...
to boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
goods and services produced in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
until its government introduced formal and practical reforms to significantly curtail the prostitution of children
Prostitution of children
Prostitution of children or child prostitution is the commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, for financial benefit. The term normally refers to prostitution by a minor, or person under the local age of majority...
.
The organization of Don't! Buy! Thai! was willfully informal, with promoters refusing donations.
The campaign had great difficulty attracting attention from television, radio, and print media, so discussion was conducted largely on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Online, it came under vociferous attack by Sean Parlaman
Sean Parlaman
Griffith Simmons Parlaman III , who often referred to himself as “Sean Parlaman”, was a self-proclaimed activist who, before his death, sought to raise awareness regarding the trafficking and prostitution of children into Thailand...
, who presented himself as a crusader against the prostitution of children. Parlaman variously accused the Don't! Buy! Thai! campaigners of being fundamentalist Christians, right-wing bigots, and pedophiles
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
.
In 2000, frustrated by the lack of traction and noting that the prostitution of children to sex tourists had become less concentrated in Thailand, Vachss and most of the involved abandoned the boycott.