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Police Won’t Investigate Oulu’s Thai Massage Parlours |
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By Sangita Basu
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Friday, 29 February 2008 |
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Thai Massage Parlours in Oulu will only be investigated by the police if a ‘specific complaint’ is made to them, Oulu police have announced.
Undercover Journalists
The calls for an investigation began after an undercover investigation by Helsingin Sanomat in August which reported that Helsinki’s Thai Massage Parlours were ‘without exception’ covers for brothels. The undercover journalists went to thirty Helsinki Thai Message Parlours and found that all were prepared to offer ‘sexual services’ in addition to a traditional ‘rub down.’
Helsinki Police told the newspaper that little action could be taken against the Massage Parlours themselves as offering sexual services is not itself illegal in Finland. However, procuring sex in public and organised pimping is illegal.
Many Finns have been commenting on forums that the investigation was pointless as people already knew that many Thai Massage Parlours offer sexual services. Sociologist of Prostitution Anna Kontula wrote in a 2002 report that there is an ‘ethnic divide’ in Finland whereby Thais offer ‘erotic massage’ and Russians and Russian-Estonians tend to offer ‘straight sex.’ Thai Massage Parlours were also investigated in Tampere and Rovaniemi where the police reached the same conclusions.
All Offered Sex
The team of seven journalists from Helsingin Sanomat visited the thirty Helsinki Thai Massage Parlours over a two week period. In every case, they walked in – without an appointment – and went to have a massage. They did not ask what services were available and in every case they were offered sex without even asking for it. According to the reporters, the standards of the massages varied wildly and they were always offered sex later as an ‘extra.’ In almost all cases, the Thai Massage Parlours refused to give out receipts to the customers. A month after this was reported the Finnish Minister of the Interior announced that she wanted an investigation into whether Thai Massage Parlours were involved in criminal activity. This came after Helsinki Police had said that they were not going to investigate Helsingin Sanomat’s claims because they had to conserve their resources to investigate organised prostitution by Russian and Estonian gangs. Conforming to the Stereotype
There has been no undercover investigation into Thai Massage Parlours in Oulu. I visited one near the city centre one Thursday lunch time. In terms of subjective impressions at least – it seemed to conform to the stereotype. You could not walk in but had to a ring a bell – next to which there was a hand scrawled sign – so that somebody could come up and answer. Eventually, a middle-aged and very overweight Thai lady answered the door. She was wearing a huge amount of make-up including what seemed like false eye lashes and what was basically bright red, very low cut and highly revealing frilly lingerie. She had clearly just woken-up in order to answer the door. I told her boss that I was from 65DN and asked if I could conduct an interview. She took my card but it seemed obvious that she was unlikely to contact me. One Oulu taxi-driver I spoke to insisted that the parlour in question was a brothel and that he had taken ‘drunks’ to it late at night many times. He recalled one occasion when a middle-aged man got into his taxi and demanded, ‘God! I need to get laid! Take me to the nearest Thai Massage Parlour!’ ‘It was so late at night,’ recalled the taxi-driver, ‘that I took him to all three and eventually we found one that was open!’ A number of Oulu residents I spoke to commented, to give one example, that, ‘Everyone knows that the Thai Massage Parlours are really just brothels . . . it’s always been like that! Everyone knows it!’ Legal Prostitution As part of its investigation, Helsingin Sanomat has subsequently interviewed Thai masseuses who have claimed that they are true ‘professionals’ and that ‘amateurs’ that offer sexual services in addition to their amateur massages are ‘ruining the reputation of the business’ in Helsinki. Throughout much of Europe ‘Thai Massage Parlours’ have gained a reputation as being little more than fronts for prostitution even if this is not always the case. In most European countries it is illegal to run a brothel or to allow a premise to be used as a brothel but this is not so clear cut in Finland. In 2006 a 65DN investigation into Oulu prostitution found that – with the exception of the Massage Parlours – it generally involves Russians and Estonians booking hotel rooms and it is arranged through various internet sites. Before the internet, the services were advertised in a form of code through the newspapers. Thai Massage first began to appear in Finland in the early 1990s.
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