Some girls stared at the floor while others tugged self-consciously on short hemlines, stretching the flimsy material a few centimetres longer as they catwalked awkwardly to the accompaniment of blasting hip-hop music.

Watching these young entertainers of the "Cherry-Sexy Girls" model groups were a few male customers, and a far larger crowd of Burmese sex workers, mostly in their late teens and early 20s, who sat at low tables in the darkness of the club.

Escorting several girls to a nearby table of young men, a waiter said the show was not so much modelling as marketing. "All the models are available," the waiter said, adding that the youngest girls ask $100 (£48.50) to spend a night with a customer, while the older girls and young women in the audience could be bargained down for a lot less.

Prostitution, particularly involving children, is a serious crime in military-ruled Burma, but girls taken from the club would have no problem with the authorities, the waiter assured the company, but did not explain why not.

It would seem that prostitution is one of the few things the Burmese military, fresh from its recent crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations by Buddhist monks, is still willing to tolerate.

Information on the Burmese sex trade is extremely limited, as NGOs and other organisations can not conduct proper research within the country, said Patchareeboon Sakulpitakphon at the Bangkok offices of the international organisation Ecpat, whose acronym stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. As a result of the restrictions, what is known is limited to a "basic picture based on what victims have said, and information that leaks out," Ms Patchareeboon wrote in an email. But, she added, the information available indicates that "[child] sex tourism is emerging in Burma as well as the development of the sex industry".

Rights abuses

Burma is already a big source country for people trafficked to the regional sex trade. "The junta's gross economic mismanagement, human rights abuses and its policy of using forced labour are the top causal factors for Burma's significant trafficking problem," the US state department noted in its 2007 trafficking report.

Disastrous economic policies pursued by the military have hobbled this resource-rich nation and hundreds of thousands have left the country to seek their fortunes elsewhere. With an estimated annual income of just $220 a head among Burma's 52 million people, fleeing the country to work elsewhere is all too common. For many, their effort to escape leads them into the hands of human traffickers and the sex trade in Thailand, China, Malaysia, Macau and elsewhere, according to the state department.

On a recent night in Rangoon, a boisterous group of sex workers trawled a hotel bar for customers. Lin Lin, 22, and Thin Thin, 24 - names commonly used by sex workers in Burma - said they did not normally work in hotel bars, but the 10pm curfew in the wake of the pro-democracy protests had shut down the late-night clubs and forced them to new venues to find customers.

With a mother, father and young brothers and sisters to support, Lin said that prostitution was not such a difficult choice. "Sometimes I can earn $40 from one customer," she explained, speaking in good English.

This was just her night job, she said, adding that she was in her second year at university, studying to become "an advocate of the law".

Thin Thin said she was a hairdresser during the day, but sleeping with men, particularly foreign tourists, paid far more than either could earn by legitimate work.

With one of the most serious HIV epidemics in Southeast Asia - an estimated 360,000 Burmese people were living with HIV at the end of 2005, according to the UN - Thin Thin said she took no chances, and pulled several condoms from the pocket of her faded jeans to demonstrate.

According to the UN's programme on HIV/Aids, and based on available statistics, one in three of Burma's sex workers were infected with HIV in 2005. However, the ministry of health's expenditure on HIV was estimated that year to be around $137,000, or less than half of $0.01 a head, the UN said.

Because of the junta's policies, the country also received a fraction of the international aid given to its neighbours. "Overall, overseas development assistance per capita in 2004 for Myanmar [Burma] was US$2.4, compared with $22 in Vietnam, $35 in Cambodia, and $47 in Lao People's Democratic Republic."

Now the outlook for ordinary Burmese looks decidedly gloomier in the face of the military's crackdown. The US and EU have promised more sanctions against the junta and Japan has said it will cut humanitarian aid to the country.

New revenues

Several people spoken to in Rangoon said further sanctions would have little impact on the military elite, who have lived comfortably for decades and now have new sources of revenues from contracts with countries such as China, France, India, and Thailand to extract natural resources.

Ms Patchareeboon said that tougher sanctions "will have a direct impact on children who are already vulnerable, increasing their risk significantly".

The Burmese regime has, at least, joined the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking, she said, and the Burmese media have reported on the arrests of traffickers and the stiff jail sentences they receive.

So what is shielding the trade in young girls that takes place behind the flimsy facade of "modelling" shows in Rangoon from the military regime's wrath?

The answer is as simple as it is obvious, Ms Patchareeboon said: money.

"I am sure that [the military] has officials making profit from the growing sex industry and trafficking of Burmese citizens abroad," she said. "Corruption and the institutionalisation of the sex industry is common."