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Disturbing Phnom Pehn "Slave" Brothel Report-


jitagawn

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randomshots said:Yes, wonder how he can convince anyone with this kind of report. I must have sided strongly already but he seems to fail to illustrate his point with the pictures at least, and pretty much with its written report. Gives you an idea of the mainstream readership....
The more I read him, the more I think that his problem is that people are having sex. Nothing more. He certainly does not seem to care about the 1000's of young/underage girls who decide to go to work in factories for minimum wage, working 16 hour days. Is that any less slavery?

 

Cheers,

SD

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But the traffickers who were supposed to get her and four female friends jobs as dishwashers smuggled them instead to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. There, three of the girls, including Srey Rath, were locked up in a karaoke lounge that operated as a brothel and ordered to have sex with customers.

 

Well now I know what to think about so-called tourists who go to Kuala Lumpur...

 

And the expats who live there, NGOs etc.

 

Time to ban Malaysia ?

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Sex Slaves? Lock Up the Pimps

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

Published: January 29, 2005

 

POIPET, Cambodia

 

Optimism and sex trafficking don't usually go together.

 

Yet despite the widespread belief that sex slavery is intractable and inevitable, it isn't. Look, prostitution itself will probably always be around, but we could largely stop the buying and selling of the teenagers who are routinely held in bondage in brothels from Calcutta to Belize.

 

If this is an optimistic column, one reason is that I had originally planned to use this space differently. I had thought I would find and write about whoever had replaced Srey Neth, the teenager I had purchased for $150 and then freed a year ago.

 

So I climbed to the top floor of the Phnom Pich Guesthouse (past the sign asking guests not to bring in their machine guns or hand grenades) and found the room that used to be Srey Neth's world. But now the entire floor is empty.

 

It turned out that the police had raided the guesthouse right after my columns a year ago and arrested Srey Neth's pimp. So now the local sex traffickers are more careful about peddling virgins.

 

There's a lesson there. In the long run the best way to address the problem is to educate girls and raise their status in society. But a law-enforcement model - sending traffickers to prison - is also very effective in reducing the worst forms of sex slavery.

 

"It's pretty doable," said Gary Haugen, who runs International Justice Mission, a Washington-based organization that does terrific work in battling sex trafficking. "You don't have to arrest everybody. You just have to get enough that it sends a ripple effect and changes the calculations."

 

He added wryly that his aim is to "drive traffickers of virgin village girls to fence stolen radios instead."

 

With that aim in mind, the West should pressure nations like Cambodia to adopt a two-part strategy. First, such nations must crack down on the worst forms of flesh-peddling. (A U.N. report estimated that in Asia alone, "one million children are involved in the sex trade under conditions that are indistinguishable from slavery.")

 

Two girls, age 4 and 6, were being quietly offered for sale in Poipet earlier this month. That kind of child abuse can be defeated, as has been shown in the Cambodian hamlet of Svay Pak, which specialized in pedophilia. When I first visited it, 6-year-olds were served up for $3 a session, but after foreign pressure, those brothels are now shuttered.

 

Second, they must crack down on corrupt police officers who protect the slave traders. Here in Poipet, local people whispered to me that one brothel kept terrified young virgin girls locked up in the back, awaiting sale. So I marched in the brothel's back entrance and looked around.

 

As it happened, this brothel was undergoing an expansion, which will make it the biggest in town, and the back rooms were all undergoing renovation and empty. But then the owner rushed in - and introduced himself as a senior police official.

 

I asked him if he imprisoned young girls in his brothel, and he replied: "That's impossible, because I work in the police criminal division, and so I clearly know the law."

 

Getting countries like Cambodia to confront the sale of children is easier than one may think. I'm generally very suspicious of economic sanctions, but the U.S. State Department's office on trafficking has used the threat of sanctions very effectively to get foreign governments to take steps against trafficking (such as the closing of the pedophilia brothels at Svay Pak). But it shouldn't be just one lonely office in the State Department demanding crackdowns. Where's everybody else?

 

On a reporting trip to Cambodia in 1996, I met a 15-year-old Cambodian girl who had been kidnapped off the street and imprisoned in a brothel. Her mother finally tracked her down, and they had a loving reunion in the brothel. But the pimp had paid good money for the girl and refused to give her up. The police protected the brothel, so the mother had to leave without her daughter.

 

That girl, now probably dead of AIDS, haunts me still. It was partly shame at not having intervened then that led me to breach journalistic custom last year and buy the freedom of the two sex slaves I wrote about. The solution, though, isn't to buy individual girls - that only makes trafficking more profitable - but to put traffickers behind bars.

 

Nearly a decade after I interviewed that girl, this scourge is poisoning more young lives than ever. I'm optimistic that we have the tools to wipe out this modern slavery - but do we have the will?

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Thanks kamui. Nothing really new there. It does seem as though Mr.Kristoff's larger agenda is to stamp out prostitution altogether. He certainly isn't the first to try.

 

My guess is Pnom Penh will get more like Bangkok. More bars, more freelancers perhaps even a few tentative go-gos.

 

The underage scene disappeared underground after the Svay Pak raids. I expect we will soon see the formation of a new totally uncorrupt Cambodian police unit and a few high profile rescues. But I doubt if they will involve the hotels that cater to Taiwanese and Japanese perverts. :)

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Hi,

 

"It does seem as though Mr.Kristoff's larger agenda is to stamp out prostitution altogether."

 

What makes you say that? I read in this that he is aware that stamping out prostitution is futile, and he will be happy just stamping out "the buying and selling of the teenagers who are routinely held in bondage in brothels".

 

Sanuk!

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khunsanuk said:

Hi,

 

"It does seem as though Mr.Kristoff's larger agenda is to stamp out prostitution altogether."

 

What makes you say that? I read in this that he is aware that stamping out prostitution is futile, and he will be happy just stamping out "the buying and selling of the teenagers who are routinely held in bondage in brothels".

 

Sanuk!

 

Just the way I read it...

 

"Look, prostitution itself will probably always be around, but we could largely stop the buying and selling of the teenagers....."

 

He doesn't seem very happy about prostitution period. I suspect in his ideal world it wouldn't exist but he is realistic enough to admit that it always will. World's oldest profession, necessary evil etc. etc. Isn't that how most people see it?

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kamui said:

 

...Here in Poipet, local people whispered to me that one brothel kept terrified young virgin girls locked up in the back, awaiting sale. So I marched in the brothel's back entrance and looked around.

 

As it happened, this brothel was undergoing an expansion, which will make it the biggest in town, and the back rooms were all undergoing renovation and empty. But then the owner rushed in - and introduced himself as a senior police official...

 

So that's what those things are! I'm glad to hear that confirmed.

 

I don't how many times I've wandered into an empty room in some unfamiliar building undergoing "renovations" and gotten that "odd" feeling of "Gee- this must be a sex-slave brothel employing underage kidnap victims and protected by the corrupt police."

 

Hey, Krist-jack-off: maybe you just wandered (trespassed) onto some guy's property and he was finding a nice way to ask you to leave, instead of arresting/killing you. Maybe the whispering locals were whispering about what an easily misled turd you are.

 

Sometimes, this guy sounds like a total maroon.

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"said Gary Haugen, who runs International Justice Mission, a Washington-based organization that does terrific work in battling sex trafficking."Well, that is the telling line for me. Kristoff just lost any smidgen of credibility he had in my eyes. IJM has been tossed out of Thailand. Even Fly says that they are scumbags. I posted some financials about how, in 2001-2, they paid themselves US$3M+ but provided about US$15K worth of "terrific work in battleing sex trafficking".

 

http://board.nanaplaza.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=383931&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=2&vc=1

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I read Kristof's solutions and I was less than impressed with his solutions to eradicate sex-slavery. Kristop's cities his own personal experience ( he helped 1 girl ecsape the sex-trade), as well as the opinion of an NGO worker, who stated, "its very doable", to conclude that if the West would only make sex-slavery a higher priority then it could be eradicated.

 

Kristof's solution, "...to put traffickers behind bars", would be accomplished by the west putting more pressure on countries like Cambodia to eliminate police corruption and put the pimps in jail.

 

That's it, his entire 2-point strategy, clean cops to put the pimps in jail, to end the blight of sex-slavery. In passing, he does mention the importance of education and greater awareness but what is glaringly missing from his article is any mention of the underlying poverty that motivates the families of the girls to sell their daughter's into the brothels in the first place and the dismal pay of law-enforcement in Cambodia that makes the entire system so ripe for corruption.

 

I can only surmise that Kristopf presented a very simplistic solution in the belief that presenting anything else more complicated or costly would turn off the very people who could pressure their governments to act. Its not lost on Kristof that the NYT is read by most of the decision makers in the US and also has a large audience outside the US.

 

My solution to help Cambodia would be to ask China to export a couple of million of their pheasants to settle in Cambodia. Add some Chinese, shake & stir, give it 40 yrs and voila, economic prosperity. Just copy what has worked for Thailand and keep the west out of it. We have only to look at our record of aid in Africa to realize the saying, " the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

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khunsanuk said:

Hi,

 

"It does seem as though Mr.Kristoff's larger agenda is to stamp out prostitution altogether."

 

What makes you say that? I read in this that he is aware that stamping out prostitution is futile, and he will be happy just stamping out "the buying and selling of the teenagers who are routinely held in bondage in brothels".

 

Sanuk!

As Suadam and I have questioned, why doesn't he seem to care as much about the non-sex workers in similar conditions? That's the reason for the suspicion, I think.

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