Part one of this blog post gave background and insight to the cultural roots of sex slavery in Cambodia’s Vietnamese population.  While much of the industry is found in brothels and red light districts, exploitation frequently  happens within homes.  This week highlights the roles of sex brokers, and the  tragic roles of parents in this highly trafficked community.

“Brokering sex and parenting sales

…Few in Cambodia are starving, but even so, both Cambodian and Vietnamese families in financial crisis, such as being hit suddenly with an emergency medical bill they can’t pay, are often approached by brokers, who are often known and even respected in the community, Brown said.

At times, the families themselves approach the brokers to sell their daughters, who may be told they are just going to a city to work. At first it may seem innocuous; girls work in beer gardens or Karaoke bars putting ice in customers’ glasses. But unbeknownst to them, the girls are actually on display to would-be clients wishing to purchase their sexual services from the club’s manager, said Brown. Girls are usually given a small portion of the profit, said Brown’s report.

Girls are often kept by the purchaser for two to four weeks and then returned back home where they attend school and do household chores as if nothing happened, said Brown. Other girls are put into brothels and stay in the trade for a longer time.

Lim Mony, director of ADHOC, an NGO, said that brothel owners selling girls have become adept at evading the gaze of authorities and are constantly changing the girls’ locations.

Indeed, the bulk of the sex trade has shifted from “direct,” or brothel-based sales, to “indirect” sales at high class establishments like karaoke bars and upscale hotels, said Brown.

Parents often play a key role, said Brown, whose report said parents sometimes even sign six-month renewable contracts with brothel owners so the owner can avoid responsibility if the police get wind of their activities.

Lim added that sex trafficking happens in all directions – from the provinces to Phnom Penh, from Phnom Penh to border areas near Vietnam and tourist centers like Siem Reap. Morrish said Thai men are also purchasing under-aged girls during trips to casinos in the country’s Ko Kong and Poipet provinces.

The sale of girls can command a high price from wealthy Cambodians or sex tourists.
Brown put the average fee for both Khmer (ethnic Cambodian) and Vietnamese at $482. Lim said it’s around $1,500.

The sex trade began to surge in the 1990s when UN peacekeepers arrived following the end of years of hostilities caused by the Khmer Rouge’s twisted ideology. While authorities have shut down some red light districts and commercial sex is theoretically illegal, it continues to thrive.

The link between Vietnam and Cambodia’s commercial sex trade dates back at least 100 years, as shown in a letter written in February 1875, during the French colonial period, by French naval officer Jean Moura. The letter was republished in “Colonial Cambodia’s Bad Frenchman,” by Gregor Muller of the National Archives of Cambodia.

“Old women come to large towns, collect the abandoned prostitutes and bring them here (Phnom Penh), conjuring up in their mind a better future than in Cochinchina (Vietnam),” Muller writes. “Upon arrival in Phnom Penh, they are forced to make expenditures for which they can not pay and are kept in slavery and reimbursement (of the debt), the day of which never comes.”

http://www.immigrantconnect.org/?p=1524

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A recent study from the World Bank has reported that Cambodia, currently among the poorest countries in the world, will experience the largest increase in poverty in the Asia Pacific region this year. It is this extreme, grinding poverty that has catapulted Cambodia into a breeding ground for one of the world’s fastest growing child sex trafficking syndicates. Mu Sochua, leader of Cambodia’s Opposition Party, is a modern-day whistle blower and abolitionist in the fight against the commercial sexual exploitation of children in her own country. The following video highlights her recent visit to Boulder to tell the story of innocence lost as countless vulnerable children are sold into sex slavery each day, largely due to widespread governmental corruption. Mu Sochua currently faces criminal defamation charges against Cambodia’s Prime Minister, Hun Sen.

Mu Sochua Video Link via CBS Denver

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The following is an excerpt of an article from Immigrant Connect written about one of iEmpathize’s Field Partnerships, and the population they are serving in Cambodia.  Check back next week for a follow up post with another piece of the article, or read the full  article here.

Cambodia’s Vietnamese Community Drawn into Commercial Sex Industry

By MATTHEW RUSLING | July 5th, 2009

“Roots of the Vietnamese sex trafficking

Experts say that while a certain portion of Cambodia’s Vietnamese population is being trafficked within the country, the number coming from Vietnam is unknown. Still, one need not traverse borders to be considered trafficked, according to the United Nations, which defines trafficking broadly as the buying, selling, harboring or receiving of humans for exploitation.

“(The problem) is not just about Vietnamese crossing borders,” said Brown, “but it’s about the ethnic Vietnamese community here and why there’s so much trafficking among that community.”

Children in the Vietnamese community live in a “highly sexualized environment,” in which the adults around them habitually consume entertainment like gambling, cockfighting, heavy drinking and visiting brothels, Chab Dai reported. Children the NGO surveyed were easily able to point out local brothels and were often exposed to pornography, either at “porn cafes” or at home.

Chab Dai’s focus groups found that 70 to 80 percent of the Vietnamese community was “poor or very poor.” Families are often deep in debt and many earn $1 per day collecting cans from trash heaps. Women selling sex earn about $5 per day; this in a city where a single piece of fruit, for example, can cost up to 50 cents. The report also found that Cambodian NGOs were reluctant to engage the community due to historical animosities that appear to be increasing rather than abating.

Chab Dai found that poverty is just one of many economic factors for the prevalence of the sex trade among Cambodian-based Vietnamese families, along with sudden and extraordinary expenses, such as a sudden hospitalization in the family, debt and materialism. Cultural perceptions of the place of women also play a role.

Cambodia’s 1994 Immigration Law and the 1996 Nationality Law, which say essentially that ethnicity rather than birthplace determines one’s nationality, have banned ethnic Vietnamese, along with other foreigners from owning land.

Chab Dai found that ethnic Vietnamese are severed from their homeland. Added Brown: “Ethnic Vietnamese sometimes sold all they had to come to Cambodia,” yet remain largely disconnected from Cambodian society.”

Retrieved from: http://www.immigrantconnect.org on July 10, 2009.

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We believe that outrage against the victimization of children is necessary the world over, and that the location of the crime does not lessen its atrocity.  A sad truth about child exploitation is that it knows no borders;  children can often be victimized  in our own hometowns.  The following article from The Colorado Springs Gazette highlights the recent discovery and subsequent arrests of a child pornography ring in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

15 arrested in child porn case

More than a dozen men were arrested this month as part of a law enforcement blitz on child pornography trafficking in the Pikes Peak region, police said Tuesday.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Peerless Summer, involved investigators from 15 agencies and focused on Internet users who rely on peer-to-peer networking to store and trade illegal images and video.

The effort identified as many as 25 men, of whom 15 have been arrested, Colorado Springs police spokesman Lt. David Whitlock said. Those suspects range in age from 18 to 70. Two are convicted sex offenders. Four are active-duty military.

Arrested in connection with the investigation were Aaron Holt, 24; Ryan Walker, 18; David Aardal, 70; Charles Osborn, 48; Frank McCrea, 20; Michael Bunte, 24; Kevin Gauthier, 48; Stephen Skelly, 24; James Wardwell, 66; Phillip Sheffield, 18; and John Hass, 29. The four military suspects are: David Allen, Nicholas Beach and Kyle McGuire of Fort Carson, and Andrew Evans of Peterson Air Force Base.

No evidence exists that any of the images involved local children, and the only thing linking the suspects was their method of storing and trading the material, said Sgt. Bill Dehart, supervisor of the Colorado Springs police Internet Crimes against Children unit.

Investigators used a special computer program that searches peer-to-peer networks, Dehart said. The program zeroes in on “hash values,” or computer coding, contained in computer files that have been tagged as illegal by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“We’re looking for something akin to DNA or fingerprints,” Dehart said.

After finding the material, police obtained warrants and seized suspects’ computers and other evidence during back-to-back sweeps that culminated Friday.

The probes could have taken months, but police brought in support from other members of the statewide ICAC to speed the process and shine a light on child porn trafficking during Internet Safety Month, Dehart said.

“We’re always looking for ways to be innovative, understanding that there’s budget constraints,” he said.

Colorado Springs police were assisted by law enforcement officers from El Paso, Douglas and Eagle counties and from Parker, Fort Lupton, Fort Carson and Peterson. An advantage of such wide-ranging collaboration is training officers from across the state how to conduct similar investigations in their own jurisdictions, Dehart said.

As many as 9,600 children have been exploited for child pornography but haven’t been identified, Dehart said, not including the material that is being introduced to the Internet all the time.

“The reality is, it is the memorialization of child abuse,” he said. “The more people we have actively investigating, the more chance we have to actually find a child.”

Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt said soldiers are warned against the dangers of Internet child pornography during routine briefings. Those Friday safety briefings cover everything from preventing rape to avoiding drinking and driving, but regularly cover child porn, too, she said.

“Commanders do talk about that subject at times,” she said noting there has been no special emphasis, though, even after allegations against two Fort Carson soldiers last month that they swapped child pornography with others on the Web. “We have had relatively few incidents.”

Original Article Post

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