prostitution9

Cambodia's 55,000 prostitutes are children under the age of 16. The oldest girls in the sex
industry today are teenagers, says Sao Chhoeurth, who works with AFESIP, a French NGO
that rescues and rehabilitates child prostitutes.
With recent media attention on pedophiles such as Gary Glitter in Cambodia and Matthew
Kelly in the United States of America, child prostitution and pornography have suddenly
become extremely important to Cambodia's cultural image.
With the death of Pol Pot and the end of the Khmer regime in 1998, Cambodia prospered
as a sex attraction for the many pedophiles keen on exploring new avenues after Thailand,
Vietnam and other South-East Asian nations.
The main brothel areas in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, are Toul Kork, Keo
Chandra and Svay Pak. Svay Pak, a dusty village 11 km north of Phnom Penh was a
thriving village with 50 odd brothels and child prostitutes as young as 6 years old till last
Wednesday when the police raided the village. The village which received at least 50
tourists every night, who paid a measly US$ 3 for sex with a child, and scores of locals is
now a ghost town. No one was arrested although there were dozens of pimps and
customers in the brothels at the time of the raid.
Phnom Penh police chief General Soun Chheangly said a decision was made to shut down
Svay Pak becuase it's bad name that affects the Cambodia's cultural reputation.
It took continuous campaigning by women's rights groups and the Mu Sochua, Cambodia's
women's affairs minister, for more than 2 years and a high profile ASEAN meeting, for the
Svay Pak raid to occur and the brothels to close down. Only a few of the child prostitutes
released from the brothels have reached AFESIP and the Ministry of Social Welfare. The
majority have been sent on to brothels in other tourist centres, including Siem Reap, the
service town for the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex, and Sihanoukville, a popular
beach resort in the south of the country. The police action had been widely advertised in
advance.
It is no secret that the brothels in Cambodia flourish because of their friendly relations with
influential officials in the Hun Sen government. Pimps are reported to imprison young
children who are virgins and not put them to work until they've been presented to a series
of bidders such as high-ranking military officers, politicians, businessmen and foreign
tourists. Much of this lucrative industry is controlled by senior police and military officers,
and successful arrests/prosecutions are rare. Evidence is mysteriously lost, brothels are
tipped off before raids, and pimps slip their handcuffs on the way to court.

WHILE I WAS AT SVAY PAK: LIVES OF CHILD PROSTITUTES IN CAMBODIA
The young girls working in brothels like those in Svay Pak are , in effect, sex slaves; they
receive no money, only food, and armed guards stop them running away.
Chantala, possibly 14, recounts that her a woman approached her aunt and promised to
give her a job as a live-in cleaner at a shop in Phnom Penh. The shop turned out to be a
brothel in Svay Pak. Her first customer she recounts was a Chinese man who beat her till
she was unconscious because she refused to have sex with him. He then tore her clothes
and raped her. She worked everyday from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. and still owed a huge sum to
the brothel owner.
She was one day taken to a village outside Phnom Penh. When she arrived she found 10
men waiting to have sex with her. She had to have sex with all of them. She went to the
same place many times after that.
Avy, 8-years-old, was sold into the sex trade after being raped by her stepfather and nine
other men. She was hit across the face and given electric shocks when she refused to
have sex with clients. When she grew sleepy after working long hours, the pimp thrust
chillies in her eyes.
Chantala and Avy are two among the thousands of young children who are being ruthlessly
violated every day of their precious lives. Being treated worse than slaves for the luxuries
of influential politicians, the children in Cambodia's brothels hope that the international
humanitarian community will come to their rescue.
Note: Both Chantala and Avy are in the care of AFESIP.
Pierre Legros, the director of AFESIP expressed concern that though the activity at Svay
Pak has decreased after the police raid by 90 percent, the trade has shifted temporarily to
other regions within Cambodia. It is has not yet been driven out of the country. He feels
that there is a dire need for a national strategy to combat child prostitution in Cambodia or
else each raid will only result in a shift of trade from one place to another.