Child Prostitution, Trafficking and
Sex Workers in Cambodia

A resource file prepared by Cambodia Today
in cooperation with the NGO Forum on Cambodia

South China Morning Post, March 27, 1999

Aid group offers prostitutes way to escape abuse
By Joe Cochrane  

Phnom Penh -- A women's aid group has founded the country's first trade union for sex workers, which organisers hope will protect them from abuse and encourage them to leave the industry to find legitimate employment. 

About 200 Cambodian and Vietnamese prostitutes have joined the Cambodian Prostitutes' Collective since the union was formed in December. 

Selected members were undergoing training by its leaders, said Keo Sichan, programme co-ordinator for the Cambodian Women's Development Association in Phnom Penh. 

"We call this a very simple collective," she said. "We want to protect prostitutes' human rights from being violated by violent men and corrupt local authorities. 

"Other countries have this kind of union so we decided to establish one here." 

There were at least 7,000 prostitutes working in Phnom Penh, including several hundred Vietnamese, she said, and tens of thousands more across the strife-torn country. 

Many were subject to violence and work against their will, having been kidnapped, tricked into the profession or sold to brothel owners by relatives or acquaintances. 

Human rights workers receive regular reports of prostitutes being beaten, drugged and even murdered by brothel owners and abused by clients. 

Last year, a brothel owner in northwest Cambodia beat to death a prostitute in front of witnesses, but a court dismissed the case because he was protected by military authorities. 

"These girls may be prostitutes but they are human beings, so we have to protect them," said Ms Keo Sichan. 

"We're appealing to the international community for support for these girls, who we feel can eventually leave this profession and rejoin society." 

The union provides education training in areas such as personal health care, human rights and Aids awareness. 

Ms Keo Sichan said some Phnom Penh brothel owners had complained that the union would reduce their profits. 

Colonel Ek Kreth, deputy chief of Phnom Penh municipal police, said he supported the union even though authorities launched occasional crackdowns. 

"This is a very good initiative," he said. "We want to co-operate with them. I think this will help reduce the number of prostitutes."

South China Morning Post, April 1, 1999 

Sex trade controls 

Phnom Penh (AFP) -- Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday closed Cambodia's first conference on Aids with a promise of tighter government control over the enormous sex industry. 

"Every year in Cambodia $22 million goes to the oldest career in the world," he said. "But if we cannot close prostitution, we will find a way to control it." 

Possible measures could include "finding a proper place" for brothels. 

More than 60 per cent of Cambodian males visit brothels regularly, surveys show. The habit, combined with poor education, has left the country one of the worst hit by Aids in Asia, with more than 180,000 people feared infected by HIV. 

Inter Press Service, June 17, 1999

Together, Sex Workers Speak With Louder Voice
By Debra Boyce  

PHNOM PENH, Jun 17 (IPS) - Seeking refuge from her abusive husband and rejected by her family, Tia fled her rural home for the anonymity of Phnom Penh, ending up in the Cambodian capital's largest red light district with a new life as a sex worker. 

Two weeks later, she was badly beaten by a client. In her tiny room she nursed her bruises, swollen lip and black eye, feeling completely alone. 

"There was no one I could talk to," says the demure 28-year-old Tia, eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. "I knew nothing about HIV and I was very worried about that. I didn't know how I was going to survive this place." 

Determined that other women in the Tuol Kok red light district not feel the same isolation, Tia and a handful of other sex workers decided the neigbourhood needed a formal organisation where women could go and discuss their problems with their peers. 

The result was the Cambodian Prostitutes' Union. Since its doors opened in January, its senior members have divided their time between outreach work in neighbourhood brothels and being available for women who drop by to chat. 

While it has attracted the support of nearly 200 members, brothel owners are less pleased with its presence. 

And although it has so far not been subjected to harassment, the latest wave of police crackdowns on the commercial sex industry is driving many union members underground or to other parts of the city. 

But if the fledgling organisation survives, Cambodian women's rights advocates say, it will gradually help these women learn their basic rights even in an industry many look down upon. 

"The union works really well," says Kien Sereyphal, director of the Cambodia Women's Development Association, which offers the union advice and financial assistance. 

"Before (the women) felt powerless, felt isolated from society. Now they are starting to talk. The girls realise they must join together to protect their rights," Kien Sereyphal explains. 

The union's office is housed in one half of a wooden house on one of Tuol Kok's busiest roads, nearly indistinguishable from the brothels that surround it on all sides. 

On Friday mornings, members adorned with cosmetics and jewelry crowd into sparsely furnished one-room office that is decorated with newspaper articles and posters depicting how HIV is transmitted. The dozen senior members lead discussions on health care, particularly HIV and AIDS prevention, and human rights. 

"First you talk about HIV," says Chan Dina, a 24-year-old sex worker who was first sold to a brothel at age 15. "Step by step you bring up human rights. That they have the same rights as people who are not (in the sex industry). The same rights as men. Many of the women don't realise this." 

On non-meeting days, Chan Dina and the other peer educators fan out into the brothels, armed with literature on safe sex.  While other aid agencies visit Tuol Kok to talk about HIV with the sex workers, Chan Dina believes the message is more accepted coming from fellow sex workers. 

"The union is very important," she says. "Other organisations might come here for an hour or two, but we are here all the time and are their peers. They are comfortable with us." 

With an estimated 40 percent of the country's sex workers HIV positive, AIDS awareness is a priority for the union's members. 

But AIDS is not the only threat. Women come to meetings with tales of beatings and abuse. Brothel owners frequently accuse the women of not earning enough money and punish them by forcing them to work around the clock or locking them up with out food, says Tia.  

Although the union cannot offer the women physical protection, she says, it encourages them to keep a record of their earnings as a small measure of protection. 

Although more attention has been focused in recent years on the plight of Cambodia's sex workers, Kien Sereyphal says there has been no measurable improvement in their lives, mainly because their number has continued to grow. 

Cambodia's commercial sex market has exploded since the country traded communism for a free market and multi-party democracy in the early 1990s. 

Tuol Kok mushroomed with the United Nations peace-building mission, drawing women like Chan Dina, who left her brothel in a northern Cambodian town and came to Tuol Kok during preparations for the 1993 election. 

Some of the women have been sold into prostitution by friends or kin, others enticed by traffickers with lures of fictitious jobs. Activists estimate a third are below the age of 18. Although there is a law against trafficking, which includes penalties of 10 years to 20 years imprisonment for pimps and brothel owners, it is not seriously enforced. 

When the women and girls are beaten, little is done by authorities. Last year a brothel owner in northwest Cambodia beat to death a sex worker in front of witnesses, but a court dismissed the case, activists say, because he was protected by military authorities. 

"The recognition of women's rights is not strong yet," says Kien Sereyphal. "It's written down in the constitution, yes.  But implementation, no not yet. We have to change the attitude in society."  

"Just because they work in prostitution they are still human beings and we must support them to protect and exercise their rights," Kien adds. Tuol Kok brothel owners are afraid it will encourage the girls to run away or hurt their profits, says Kien Sereyphal. 

The police have left the union alone, but the latest crackdown on brothels, announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen in March, has driven underground or to other neighbourhoods more than half of the union's 180 members. Chan Dina worries the union will lose too many members and will be forced to close. 

Privately, one government official has accused the Cambodia Women's Development Association of using the union to block the government from closing down brothels, says Kien Sereyphal. Although she has not spoken out against the crackdowns, she does not believe they are the solution. "When the brothel is open we can reach the girls so they can get an education and can protect themselves," Kien explains. 

"If they are closed down they will just go underground, the (sex workers) won't come to us and we can't get any information to them," she points out. "If we can't talk to them, AIDS will continue to spread quickly." 

[This article was featured in IPS's Gender and Human Rights Bulletin of June 21, 1999. For information on the Bulletin, part of "Human Rights and Democracy" - a project co-financed by the Inter Press Service and the European Commission - e-mail Tafadzwa Mumba at mailto:Tafadzwa@ipsafrica.org.] 

Phnom Penh Post, September 17 - 30, 1999

COMMENT
Sex worker demands rights and recognition

A member of the Sex Workers Union of Toul Kork, Dina Chan, gave this speech to the First National Conference on Gender and Development in Cambodia, held in Phnom Penh Sep 7-9. 

I CAME here today as a woman, a Khmer woman. I came here today to tell you my story, in the hope that after you listen to me you can understand my situation and the situation of thousands of Khmer women and other women around the world. 

It is very difficult for me to come here and speak to you; but I am doing this because I want you to listen, to me the real person; and I want you to remember me and what I say to you today when you are in your offices talking about policies and strategies that affect me and my sisters. 

I want you to remember we are not "problems" we are not animals, we are not viruses, we are not garbage.  

We are flesh, skin and bones, we have a heart, and we have feelings, we are a sister to someone, a daughter, a granddaughter. We are people, we are women and we want to be treated with respect, dignity and we want rights like the rest of you enjoy. 

I was trafficked, I was raped, beaten, and forced to accept men. I was humiliated and forced to be an object so men, yes men, could take their pleasure, I brought profit to many and brought pleasure to others. And for myself I brought shame, pain and humiliation. 

But worst of all I receive demeaning comments from you: you discriminate against me, you give yourselves a job because of me and you are busy thinking about the best way to protect the community from me. 

The police come to Toul Kork almost every day. They always have a reason to come, but they come more frequently before festivals like Pchum Ben, because we are an easy target to extract money from. 

In a public forum the chief of these police stands up and states "We do not arrest the girls": lies and more lies. They arrest us and take our money, our jewelry, sometimes even our few possessions we have in our room like our bed covers. 

If we cannot pay then they detain us for a day or two, they give us no water. When they are convinced we simply have no money to pay they take us to another brothel and sell us to a new maebon (pimp), usually for US$100 for one girl. Then we become indebted once again and have to pay off that debt to the new maebon. 

This is trafficking. The police, yes, the police sell us for another cycle of slavery. Do you think it is in their interests to see my occupation decriminalized? Of course not: then they lose their share of the money. 

In one day we pay almost 15,000 riel in bribes to the district police, to the municipal authorities and the local authorities. Then another group of police come and arrest us. If we do not run and hide we are re-sold to slavery. 

Your solution is to ask these people to protect us. Think again. They live off our blood. Money is too important to everyone, money and more money. It is not enough to eat: people demand more because they want nice things. 

I come from a poor family; they sent me to study at a cultural school in Phnom Penh. I was living with a family but I could not contribute to my living, so they helped me find a job in a nearby hotel washing dishes. 

This hotel had many sex workers. But I just washed dishes and went to school. 

One night a man followed me when I was on my way home and raped me. I was only 17 years of age. You cannot imagine how I felt and what impact this had on me. But after that, I was lured to becoming a sex worker under false promises. 

I was sent to Stung Treng; I was beaten when I refused to accept men. Shortly after I was taken to Stung Treng a man came to pay for me to go with him. He paid my maebon. 

He took me to the pig slaughter house where he worked and locked me in a dirty smelly cell. Then he came back with six other men. They all, one by one, raped me; one man raped me twice. After a whole night of gang rape I was faint with pain. 

When the morning came I heard the workers preparing to start their work. I heard the pigs being pushed into the pens, they were screaming. I knew what that feeling was like: I was no better than the pigs to these men; they could have killed me. Something inside me did die, and I will never be the same. 

I am 24 years old and my life has been like this since 1993. I did not know the Khmer Rouge years but I have heard the stories of suffering. People say they were slaves. 

Compared to my life for the last five years I think I and my sisters have suffered and are suffering more than you have. I know starvation, I know slavery, I know being forced to work all day. But I also know physical violation and torture every day, I know discrimination and hatred from my country-people, I know not being wanted and accepted from my society, the society that put me in this condition. I know fear, I feel it every day, even now that I dare speak my life is in danger. 

This is a crime, but no one is punished. I fought the Khmer Rouge, I was a soldier in Phnom Pddei, fighting to protect you from the Khmer Rouge and risking my life. 

I fought for the freedom of the Cambodian people, this is what the commander told us we were to do and I was proud I was fighting for freedom. I fought for your freedom - only to become enslaved and abused by you. 

After all these years I now work as a sex worker. I also run a union to unite sex workers to fight for basic rights and for freedom. We bring our voices to forums like this to educate people like you, with the hope you can learn from us. Many of my sisters are scared to join our struggle because they live in constant fear of abuse and threats. 

Some of you think that I am bad because I choose to remain a sex worker. My answer to those people is: I think your society, my society, my motherland Cambodia, is bad because it does not give girls like me choices; choices that I see are better for me. 

I think it is bad that my country allows men to rape young women like me and my sisters and go unpunished. I think it is bad that my society lets men seek and demand the services of women like me. I think it is criminal that we are enslaved to make money for the powerful. 

I think it is bad that my family are so poor and getting poorer because they can not survive as farmers with little resources which are getting smaller because more powerful people move them off their land. 

I think it is bad the police treat me and my sisters like we are criminals but those who exploit us and take our dignity, our money and sometimes our lives live in freedom, enjoying their lives with their families. Because why? Because they have a powerful relative, because they have money. 

Is this right? Is this justice? My sisters and I we do not create the demand, we are the objects; the demand comes from the men, the men come to us. 

We are cheated, deceived, trafficked, humiliated and tortured. Why? Because men want us and we bring money to the powerful. But we are the powerless. 

You give us AIDS; when we are no longer profitable you leave us to die, but we do not die in peace: you point your finger and you blame us. 

You, the development organizations, give us condoms and teach us all the time about AIDS. We do not want your words, we do not want your judgment, we do not want you to tell us what is better for us. We know about AIDs; we watch our sisters die from the disease. 

Ask us if we have the power to demand condom use from our clients. Look at me: you see a woman, but my boss sees dollars. An extra payment to my boss and the client does not wear a condom. If I protest I receive a beating. If I die tomorrow no one cares: there are many other girls who will be tricked and trafficked like me, because we feed many people. 

I do not want to go to your shelter and learn to sew so you can get me work in a factory. This is not what I want. If I tell you that you will call me a srei koit (prostitute). But those words are easy for you because you have easy solutions to difficult problems you do not understand, and you do not understand because you do not listen. 

My life has become this way now; for me there is no turning back, so let me continue to practice my occupation, but recognize my occupation and give me my rights, so I am protected and I can have power to demand justice. 

I am a post Khmer Rouge child

But was a slave

I was forced to work against my choice

My body is tortured

I am full of pain

I am not a citizen

I am not a person

You see me as a virus

I am invisible

Your eyes do not see me

You hate me

You blame me

Some of you pity me

I do not want your pity

I do not want your charity

I want my rights

Not your lies and abuse

Recommendations

1. Formulation of legislation that protects us sex workers, so we can profit 100% from our work.

2. Formulate legislation that those who exploit us and feed from us are eliminated and arrested, and cannot operate.

3. Recognition of our work as a legitimate occupation: sex work is work.

4. End to police harassment, abuse and violence.

5. Human rights for sex workers.

6. Legalize sex work so we can have power to protect ourselves and use condoms 100% of the time.

7. Legalizing sex work will minimize trafficking because people can no longer profit from the sex industry.

8. If we have power and control we can protect the young children who are brought to the brothels. We can help in the fight to protect the children.  

South China Morning Post, Saturday, November 6, 1999 

Wealthy clients demand virgins for 'safe sex'
By Joe Cochrane  

Phnom Penh -- As Cambodia grapples with what is the highest HIV infection rate in Asia, wealthy foreign and Cambodian men alike are turning to virgins as an alternative to using condoms. 

That in turn, according to children and women's rights workers, has caused a disturbing increase in prostitutes under 18, who number as many as 16,000. 

"About one-third of the 50,000 Cambodian and Vietnamese prostitutes in Cambodia are children, ranging from 11 to 18," said Kien Serey Phal, director of the Cambodian Women's Development Association in Phnom Penh. 

"Child prostitution is increasing because people with money think they will live longer and remain healthy if they have sex with young girls," she said. "And they are afraid of HIV, so they buy virgins."

For powerful Cambodian figures and foreign sex tourists, child prostitutes like Thi Thu offer safe sex.

The 15-year-old Vietnamese girl was a virgin until three weeks ago, when a Taiwanese businessman paid US$500 to have sex with her for two days in a private house in Phnom Penh. 

"It was my first time sleeping with a man in my life," the attractive girl said shyly. "Now I've slept with several men, all of them foreigners. 

"My parents have a lot of debts, so my sister brought me to Cambodia to sell myself for money." 

Nguyen Cuong, a Vietnamese brothel owner in Phnom Penh, sells virgins aged 13 to 15 for US$500 for three days or US$600 for a week. 

"They are all from poor families in south Vietnam," she said. 

"My sister knows people involved in a [human-trafficking] network." 

Once her virginity is lost, a prostitute's value falls to less than US$100 per sex session, and will drop further as she becomes older and services more clients. 

Police occasionally shut down brothels in Phnom Penh, but the raids are mostly for show - officers receive protection money from pimps and often return prostitutes who escape and seek their help. 

Senior government and military officials - including at least two cabinet members - are rumoured to frequent establishments offering virgins. 

Yim Po, director of the Cambodian Centre for the Protection of Children's Rights, is convinced the increase in child prostitution can be blamed on powerful figures demanding virgins to avoid contracting HIV. 

"Some government officials who have power and money like to have sex with young girls. We know who they are, but we are afraid to say their names." 

Mao Sovadei, director of the Ministry of Social Affairs' child welfare department said: "The Government has no money to stop it. 

"We just know that there are more and more child prostitutes in Cambodia, and we lack the money to crack down on it." 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Khmer kids of the night
By Braema Mathi 

Phnom Penh -- Young girls in body-hugging clothes parade outside wooden doorways bathed in red light. Loud music blares from floor-to-ceiling speakers. 

This is the Tuol Kok district in central Phnom Penh, one of the city's three red-light areas where the underaged-sex trade thrives. 

Street after street of wooden huts, with more than 500 girls, are a hunting ground for Cambodians and foreigners alike. 

The muddy tracks, the smell and the filth under the huts do not dampen the ardour of men who walk or ride by on 70-cc Honda motorcycles or in shared taxis, teasing the girls who call out their services and prices. 

In the south, 20 km away in Svay Pak, the brothels are mainly brick-walled double-storey houses. The girls -- fewer in number -- are better-dressed and sit in groups on the verandahs, calling out to the men who walk by. 

Over at the Thai-Cambodian border town of Poipet, 350 km north-east of Phnom Penh, a few brothels screen pornographic movies to get the men in the mood. Two of the brothels here are filled with young Vietnamese girls. 

A November 1999 UN Children's Fund (Unicef) report said that more than a third of the prostitutes in Cambodia were below the age of 18, and that four out of five boys, hanging out in its city streets, were prostituting themselves to men. 

No wonder Internet searches by paedophiles return full of references to Cambodia. 

Prostitution escalated in Cambodia when Untac (the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) forces, comprising 22,000 soldiers, police and administrators, moved in in 1991. 

They were there to keep the peace, repatriate about 400,000 refugees who had fled the Pol Pot regime that killed up to three million Cambodians, and oversee Cambodia's first free elections in 1993. 

The number of prostitutes in the cities rose from 6,000 in 1991 to 20,000 the following year. 

A Cambodian Women's Development Association report said almost half of them were abducted by traffickers and sold into the mushrooming sex trade. Many were re-sold later to brothels in Thailand and Vietnam. 

The relative lack of law and order and Cambodia's open-door policy since late 1998 helped entrench the sex trade, with brothels serving international as well as local clients. 

Mr Sam Rainsy, an elected MP and former Minister of Finance, said often the brothels were in the hands of “people in uniform”. 

This made it hard to control. “There is no rule of law and corruption is rampant,” said Mr Rainsy, head of an opposition party. 

Add to this extreme poverty. He said most of the 11 million people in Cambodia did not earn decent salaries and almost 40 per cent were surviving on less than US$1 (S$1.73) a day. 

Villagers were also ignorant of the trafficking, said Mr Rainsy, and so fell prey to sex syndicates offering big bucks for their daughters to work in the city. 

Traffickers strike with great success in pre-harvest periods, when farmers are short of money and are waiting for the rice to grow. 

They say the young girls can earn good money in the city, selling flowers or working as waitresses, and the family is given a “loan”. 

The reality: the girls end up in brothels, where they are forced into prostitution. 

Often, they are not told the loan amount or the interest rates. Many do not know if their wages are sent back to their families. 

Often, the girls are sold within a syndicate of brothels to hide their whereabouts and to service different types of clients. 

Many can only hope the police will catch and repatriate them when they solicit in the streets. 

But when corruption is rife, it is hard to make this kind of escape. Some policemen get about 250 baht (S$11) a month from each brothel to turn a blind eye. 

But not all girls want out. Some get used to it, while others cannot adjust to other jobs. 

Mrs Chhea Manith, director of the Transit Centre, a repatriation facility at the border town, Poipet, said: “Some of the children are so street-smart, they are not happy to be caught and sent home. They tell us they make more money on the streets than on the farms, where life is tougher.” 

Mr Soun Sokhorn, project coordinator at the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre in Poipet, said the girls all lie about their ages. 

“But we know from experience they are underaged, and we keep going back till we are convinced they do not want help.” 

Brothels are not the only places where children are exploited. Social workers estimate that 400 Cambodian children arrive at the border every day and beg, netting about 50 baht each. 

“These children are vulnerable, open to abuse and can be easily abducted,” said Mr Malai Suo, a social worker with Goutte Dean, a non-governmental organisation set up in 1999 to take in street children. 

Aids is also spreading: 250,000 people have the virus while 24,000 have full-blown Aids. 

But Poipet, with a population of 42,000, wants the tourist trade just as much as Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, with its famed Angkor Wat. So the underaged-sex racket is set to deepen even as work has begun to arrest the problem. 

Said Mr Men Sedtharoat, Unicef's assistant project officer: “We need to make up for lost time after 20 years of war. Our children, who form half of the population, are our hope and must be saved from such exploitation.” 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Death threats against social workers out to help 

The social workers do not earn much, make dangerous trips into red-light districts and sometimes face death threats. But their passion is what drives them to stem the tide of child prostitution in Cambodia. 

Mr Sao Choeurth, the technical manager at Afesip (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances), has not been paid since January but he continues working. 

The non-governmental organisation formed in 1996 to rescue girls from prostitution and give them vocational training is short of money, having expanded in size and programmes. 

It is supported by international bodies such as Unicef and Save the Children (UK). 

Afesip founder Somaly Mau-Legros, 30, a Cambodian, came across many young girls trapped in the sex trade in 1993 while promoting hygiene and safe sex among prostitutes for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). 

"They asked me to save them. I had to do something." 

Brothel owners have, in the past, threatened her life and, last year, she went into hiding in Laos because of a death threat. 

At the Afesip centre in Phnom Penh, 50 girls aged 15 and above attend literacy classes in the morning and tailoring in the afternoon, and run a hair-dressing salon in the community. Five girls also live on their own in a flat and work in a garment factory nearby, earning US$30 (S$52) a month. And at the Kampong Cham shelter in the countryside, 31 girls aged 14 and below do farm work. 

Afesip is among more than 300 NGOs in Cambodia which plug the needs of the 11 million people there. Most began work only in the last two years. 

In March, Cambodia set up its first Transit Centre at Poipet, a border town between Thailand and Cambodia. The centre helps repatriate Cambodian children rescued from illegal activities in Thailand to their homes. 

To date, 66 children under 18 years of age have been repatriated. More than half were begging in Bangkok, 20 were selling flowers and the rest were in the sex trade. 

Unicef, too, has been working with Cambodia to fund, support and train officers. 

But rebuilding the lives of those trapped in illegal trades is hard. Social workers say at least 10 per cent of the girls return to prostitution. 

Cambodia's Minister for Women's and Veterans' Affairs, Mrs Mu Sochua, said: “If we just look at problems, the mountain is very high. But today I'm sitting in a restaurant and talking to you -- that's improvement in Cambodia.” 

She is determined to push on: “I'll make sure we climb to the top of this mountain for the sake of our future generations, of whom more than half are under 15 years old.” 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Tightening laws to safeguard children 

Cambodia will soon form an inter-ministerial committee to look into ways of tightening the laws to protect children who have been exploited and to take brothel owners to task. 

Cambodia's Minister of Women's and Veterans' Affairs, Mrs Mu Sochua, told The Sunday Times in an interview in Phnom Penh that the committee will develop a framework to ensure that children's rights to education, health facilities and justice are upheld. 

Her ministry has been submitting records to the Cambodian Parliament to re-open cases in which justice had not been served. 

One such example was the re-sentencing of a brothel owner to 12 years' jail; the original term was six months. 

She said the United Nations Children's Fund and other non-governmental organisations are now helping to train lawyers, judges and police officers to help sexually-exploited victims. 

She added: “More importantly, the law must be changed to make trafficking of children illegal, and guidelines to control and monitor brothels need to be put into place.” 

More women, she said, need to get into front-line jobs to interview abused victims to make them feel more comfortable. 

She cited a recent case of a gang-raped woman who was interviewed for a week by different police officers, all men. 

Commenting on the sex trade, she said the main driver of the trade in Cambodia was poverty. 

A quarter of all households were headed by women as many men had been killed in the civil war that lasted almost two decades. 

Also many men, she said, preferred to spend money on beer, karaoke and cigarettes, rather than on their children's education. 

Three-quarters of the more than five million women in the country are illiterate and less than half of the five million children are going to schools. 

“We are a young democracy, moving too far, too fast with too much emphasis on today and not tomorrow.” 

While candid about the situation in Cambodia, she noted that there were external causes, too. 

She said: “When a wealthy man wants to fish he looks for the best pond -- willing virgins. 

“Cambodia is a pawn in the global trend of the sexual exploitation of children. 

“It makes me angry that such men move to poorer countries to look for children as they know they cannot exploit the children in their own backyard.” 

Nevertheless, she acknowledged that the biggest challenge was internal -- corruption. 

“There must be strong measures first to punish the corrupt and the government needs to show that it is serious in wanting to uphold justice,” she said. 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Virgin ruse 

Ra Ratt is a frail 14-year-old whose vagina has been stitched up more than five times so that clients would think she was a virgin. 

Her owners forced her to take clients well before her wounds healed, so that the men would believe that the bleeding was from her torn hymen. 

"It was so very painful," she said with a shudder. 

Last year, she followed a neighbour from her home in Preah Vihear, 200 km north-east of Phnom Penh, to look for work in the city to help her mother, three sisters and brother. Her father had died. 

In the city, she was left in a house with promises that work at a restaurant would begin the next day. 

But that evening, she found she had been sold for US$1,000 (S$1,700). 

For a year, she saw many clients -- Koreans, Japanese, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Taiwanese and Caucasians. 

"I cannot remember most of them -- as soon as one leaves, another comes in," she said. 

She worked from 8.30 am to 10 pm and there were beatings if she could not meet the quota of clients. 

Often, she was taken to a doctor who would put her under anaesthesia and stitch up her vagina. 

About a year into the job, she was asked to solicit in the streets, but the police caught her. 

The non-governmental group Afesip (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances) was alerted. 

Now, she lives in an Afesip shelter in the Kampong Cham district, about 60 km north of Phnom Penh. 

Social workers are now gathering evidence against the brothel owner. 

Meanwhile, Ratt is going to school -- for the first time. She has also received some pocket money -- 200 riel (10 Singapore cents) for the first time. She is saving money for her family. 

She said: "People like that brothel owner must be punished so that other girls will not have to go through what I did." 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Sold to a Bangkok brothel for $450 

She was caught more than 10 times by Thai police and sent back from Bangkok to the Thai-Cambodian border town of Poipet. 

But the 15-year-old had brothel agents who would bribe border-immigration officers. 

"Long" said she was lured into prostitution two years ago by a neighbour -- a woman -- who told her she could earn Thai baht selling flowers in Bangkok. 

Though her mother, who sells cakes, disapproved, she took off with the woman in the hope of earning baht, which was 100 times stronger than the Cambodian riel. 

In Bangkok, she was sold to a brothel for 10,000 baht (S$450). From that day, she took five clients every night from 1 to 5 am, as Thai police stopped checking brothels after midnight. 

Within a year, she was soliciting in the streets. 

Trying to escape the police in May, she was hit by a car and hospitalised. The brothel lost track of her and she was sent back to the border. In Poipet, social workers took her. Now, she is in a shelter run by the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre. 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

She has only eight more years to live 

The reddish sunset lit up the bright-green paddy fields along the bumpy three-hour ride to reach the main trunk road to Phnom Penh. 

But that beautiful scene failed to bring a smile to 14-year-old Srey Khon's lips. Instead, she turned away to stare at the mud-filled tracks. In the gathering darkness, social worker Sao Choeurth revealed that Khon caught the HIV virus two years ago. 

She was now on her way from the shelter run by Afesip (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances) to the Cambodian capital for a medical check-up. She herself stated it plainly in Khmer: ""If what the doctor said is right, I have eight more years to live.'' 

The girl, from Prey Veaeng Province, 100 km south-east of Phnom Penh, was forced into prostitution at the age of 11. 

In 1997, she was sold for US$33 (S$59) by her elder sister to work as a maid for a family in Phnom Penh. But the epileptic girl ran away three months into the job, as she found the work hard. 

She was sleeping on a street bench with 5,000 riel (S$2.30) in her pocket when a woman came up to her and promised to send her to a welfare home. 

But it turned out to be a brothel, where she was sold for US$30 (S$54) and her pleas to the brothel owner were met with slaps. Her first client also slapped and kicked her into submission. She said: "I had to spend the whole night with him. I was very tired, confused, unhappy and angry with everything." 

Soon, she was receiving at least 10 clients a day. 

Six months later, she was sold to another brothel owner and, after a few months, sold again. 

With her fourth owner, she was taking drunk clients and earning 3,000 riel (S$1.40) per session. 

She was 13 and often, she said, she had to clear up the vomit on her body and on the bed before the next drunk client staggered in. 

Soon, she was falling sick often and the brothel owner dropped her off at a hospital. 

An old man took pity on her, gave her money and took her into the hospital. A blood test showed she had the Aids virus. 

Afesip's social workers were alerted and, today, she lives with 30 other girls at a shelter. 

She has asked Mr Choeurth, the social worker, to look after her younger brother who was found as a street child in the city. He now lives with monks in a village near the shelter. 

She said: "'All I want now is for my brother to do well in life and not be like me. 

"I must have been a bad person in my previous life to deserve and suffer like this." 

The Straits Times (Singapore) Interactive, Sunday, July 16, 2000 

Working to earn money for family 

She still walks the streets of Poipet, looking for clients to entertain with 20 minutes of paid sex. 

Sri Rong is a street-smart 15-year-old who knows how to dodge the police. 

She was soliciting at an open-air karaoke session in a field when she was approached for an interview. 

She was selling fish at a market stall in Poipet last year when a Thai man in his 20s asked her if she wanted to work in Thailand and earn baht. 

She asked her father, who ran the stall, if she could go, but he refused because her older sister had gone to Bangkok and not returned. 

But the man wooed her.

He took her to restaurants, bought her ice-cream and dresses and told her about the good life in Bangkok. 

She said: “He was a good man and kind. I fell in love with him as he was so gentle.” 

So, she followed him to Bangkok, leaving her father, three brothers and three sisters. Her mother had died three years before. 

When they reached Bangkok, he gave her an air-conditioned room to herself and kept buying her clothes. 

“A few days later, I slept with him because I loved him,” she said. 

She stayed with him for five months and, in that time, she also had sex with other men, who were his “friends”. 

He gave her 1,500 baht (S$67) every month, and she sent the money home. 

When she asked to return to Poipet in April this year, the man gave her 15,000 baht as a farewell gift. 

“He wants me to go back. I don't know. 

“I will work here and see what happens. I want to get out.” 

Phnom Penh Post, August 4 - 17, 2000 

Officials turn blind eye to child trafficking
By Vong Sokheng 

Human rights groups and individual police officers are noticing an increase in child trafficking and prostitution and a lack of enthusiasm by the authorities to address the problem. 

The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC) told the Post that trafficking in children for sexual purposes is booming, because of the lack of law enforcement and the culture of impunity. 

LICADHO and ADHOC said that there were people in the police, judiciary and military making substantial profits from the trade, which is regularly supplied with children from financially desperate parents. 

As an example, a brothel visited by the Post offered virgin girls for $600 for a week's use. The owner assured the Post that full discretion was assured and that there would be no problem with the authorities because the owner's father was the district police chief. 

Dr Kek Galabru, the President of LICADHO, said that though safeguards for children were built into Cambodia's constitution, in practice, abused children were being ignored by the legal system and stigmatized by society. 

She said some very important first steps have already been taken by the Government, but they cannot be carried forward in the absence of the authorities refusal to recognize a child's right to protection under the law. 

She said the authorities are still giving protection to traffickers and that brothels were often owned by Government officials. 

"We know of cases of human trafficking in which NGOs have provided information to the authorities in order to take action against the traffickers, but the authorities ignored the cases," said Galabru. 

A police official from the Ministry of Interior acknowledged that the trafficking in children for sexual purposes is a serious problem and said little was being done to stop it. 

"No specific department in the Ministry of Interior is working on the issue of human trafficking, and it's terrible situation," said the official. 

He said that the National Police Director, Hok Lundy, planned to establish a new department against sexual exploitation of children. 

The new department will be created by next month and once it is operational they will try and gauge the size of the problem. 

"Now, the police in each commune or district are responsible for fighting against traffickers by themselves, therefore the Ministry of Interior has no statistics about the situation," said the official. 

Lim Mony, the Head of the Women Section of ADHOC, said part of the problem was the attitude of Cambodian parents to the physical wellbeing of their children. She said that in Cambodian culture, people do not regard violence as necessarily a bad thing, and often punish children by beating them. She said violence was often linked to the stresses brought on by poverty, debt, lack of family support, marital breakup and unemployment. 

She said around half the number of children involved in child prostitution were sold by family members, others were provided by brokers. 

There has, she said, been a noticeable drop, albeit anecdotal, in the starting age of prostitutes, with pre-teen sex workers becoming more common. 

However the lack of research meant little is known about the extent of the problem and often what little research has been done is contradictory. An ADHOC investigation yielded 87 reported cases of trafficking in nine provinces in 1999. But at the same time other NGOs put the number of child prostitutes at more than 2,000 nationwide. 

Sun Vanna, chief of the bureau for prevention of trafficking from the Ministry of Women and Veteran's Affairs, said the exact number of sexually exploited children is hard to discover due to the clandestine nature of the industry. 

Vanna said there were no updated, accurate statistics on the number of women and children who are trafficked, from where, and to what destinations. 

She quoted studies by the Human Rights Commission in 1996-1997 which estimated nearly 15,000 women were involved in the sex industry - 81 per cent Khmer, 18 per cent Vietnamese and one per cent from other countries. 

A survey by the UNDP in 1994 of five provinces had a total of 13,000 female sex workers, of which 7,000 were Vietnamese. But little was known about the age of the women. 

The only conclusion Vanna said she could make from the information available was that the problem was getting worse. 

"I found that the situation of human trafficking has been increasing from year to year since 1993," she said. 

Mony said that not only was trafficking in Cambodian children for sexual purposes getting worse locally, it had now become an international business, with children being sent to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan. 

According to LICADHO and ADHOC, the sexual exploitation of children recognizes no borders. Although the problem is widely discussed internationally, especially around the tourist trade, more information and monitoring is needed, as is increased co-operation between national police and border officials. 

Meanwhile there is still a steady source of children, with parents either selling their children through desperation or often because they were duped into believing the children were going to work as maids or be adopted. 

Galabru said the current price of a child was US$100-to-$200 in rural areas and $500-to-$700 in Phnom Penh. 

Mony and Dr Galabru said the results of a childhood spent in the sex trade were profound. Those who survive the physical injuries and manage to avoid diseases such as HIV are left social and emotional cripples. 

Mony said the problem was nationwide, though large population centers such as Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville or border areas have the greatest number of child sex workers. 

Mony and Galabru said the issue of child prostitution is complex: lack of education and job opportunities, family breakup, and the regional economic crisis all have an impact. The threat of HIV/AIDS makes virgins attractive prey, hence increasing the demand for young sex workers. But the single biggest problem was a lack of will to stop the trade. 

"Weak law enforcement gives leeway for brothel owners and those trading in human beings," said Galabru. 

Agence France-Presse, Monday, August 14, 2000 

UN pressure Cambodia on human trafficking 

PHNOM PENH, Aug 14 (AFP) -- The United Nations is putting pressure on Cambodian authorities to identify and prosecute those responsible for trafficking Eastern European women into the country and turning them into sex slaves, officials said Monday. 

The pressure follows a police raid on the franchise of a major US hotel chain Sunday to free six young women from Romania and Moldova allegedly forced to work as prostitutes for clients including top government officials. 

A seventh woman, who according to local media and rights workers was with a senior official from the tourism authority at the time of the raid, was rescued later in the day. 

"Until we see the outcome (of this case) it is hard to say what we expect. But we are definately putting a lot of pressure on the authorities, that's for sure," said Marlene Alejos head of the UN's human rights monitoring and protection unit. 

"We are going to work on it ... We will definately follow up," she told AFP. 

She said the traumatised women were now in UN custody and would be returned home as soon as police investigations were complete. 

Cambodian police acting on a tip-off from UN human rights workers raided the Best Western hotel on Monivong Boulevard in the central city, where the women aged between 18 and 23 were being held in two rooms. 

Following the raid by a dozen armed military police accompanied by UN workers, police briefly detained Chinese-Canadian hotelier and owner Richard Cheung for questioning as well as his Singaporean manager who had confiscated the women's passports on arrival here. 

They have yet to be charged and are no longer in police custody. 

"We invited them for questioning at the military police station to find out their level of involvement," deputy commander of the Phnom Penh military police Sim Hong told AFP. 

"We cannot rule out any charge against them yet, we are still working on it." 

Deputy prosecutor for the Phnom Penh municipal court Ngeth Sarath said charges, if there were to be any, would have to be filed by police within 48 hours. 

"The period of 48 hours for investigation has not expired yet, but the case has not yet been forwarded to me so I cannot charge them yet." 

Police said that during the raid they had discovered photos of at least 11 young European women available to wealthy clients and they were now searching for them. 

The women told AFP at the scene they had begun their journey in Romania, from where they had been transported to the Turkish capital and then on to Bangkok and Phnom Penh. 

"We came here two weeks ago, and we really want to go home. We had all our passports and tickets confiscated as soon as we arrived at the airport and have been sex slaves," said one of the girls requesting anonymity. 

Alejos said the women told her they began their journey from Eastern Europe voluntarily, believing they were going to work as dancers at the Best Western hotel.   

Reuters, Wednesday, August 16, 2000

Cambodia Police Hunt Romanian on Trafficking Charge

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Romanian woman was charged in absentia Wednesday  with human trafficking after seven Eastern European women were rescued from a Phnom Penh hotel where they say they were held as sex slaves.

"We charged her this morning with human trafficking, and we are continuing the investigation,'' said Phnom Penh municipal court chief prosecutor Ouk Savuth.

Military police said they have been searching since Sunday for the 30-year-old woman, identified as Topirceanu Norica. Earlier, she was said to be known only as Norika.

"We haven't found her yet,'' military police deputy commander General Chhin Chan Por told Reuters.

The seven women, aged between 18 and 24, said they arrived in Cambodia on July 25 after being promised jobs as dancers by a Romanian company but found they were going to work as hostesses and prostitutes.

One of the women, Claudia, 23, told Reuters they were imprisoned in a hotel during the day and bused to another hotel's nightclub every evening to entertain high-level officials.

"We never had sex,'' she said. "The customers paid for us to go out and have sex, but we refused and their money was given back.'' 

Human rights officials in P