BANGKOK: A bar featuring sado-masochistic role-playing and women in school uniforms became the first Bangkok entertainment venue to be closed under new “social order” legislation, news reports said yesterday.
Deputy Interior Minister Pracha Maleenond, who is spearheading the social order crusade, led police on the early Tuesday raid on The Cave bar in the heart of Bangkok's Sukhumvit Road tourist belt.
“The bar will be closed for 90 days as punishment for allowing lewd acts to be performed within its premises,” The Nation newspaper quoted Pracha as saying.
The paper quoted a foreign patron as saying the approximately 50 women working at the bar had been staging increasingly daring shows in recent weeks, despite a widely publicised vice crackdown by police.
The police raid shortly after midnight interrupted a sadistic show in which caged women invited guests to whip them or pour melted candle wax over their bodies.
Male customers were in turn invited to receive the same treatment from the women.
As police burst in they discovered three G-string clad dancers tied up in a steel cage and dozens of women wearing school uniforms or prancing around with chains and whips.
Upstairs police found theme rooms such as a classroom and a hospital delivery ward along with various sex toys, leather outfits and handcuffs.
The women employees were arrested and the bar's owner, Jamjit Yotachai, 31, was charged with staging illegal pornographic shows.
She faces a possible one-year jail sentence and a fine of up to 60,000 baht (RM5,800) under the new entertainment venue law, which came into effect on Jan 13.
Another law forcing bars to close at midnight is due to go into effect on March 1, while licence fees for entertainment venues are to be increased a hundred-fold to 50,000 baht (RM4,900). – dpa
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