From an October 27, 2009, statement by the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers, based in Bangkok. In a 2005 book, The Bad Life, French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand wrote about having sex with young male prostitutes in Thailand; the passages were widely discussed in the French press last fall, after Mitterrand protested Roman Polanski’s arrest. Mitterrand later said that he had sex only with adults.

It has come to our attention that there is continuing debate around Frédéric Mitterrand’s admission that he paid for sex with male sex workers in Thailand. We have seen attacks on him…