Posted on 01/19/2005 7:28:26 PM PST by wagglebee
BATTAMBANG, Cambodia
A year ago, a pimp handed me a quivering teenage girl. Her name was Srey Neth, and she was one of the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are enslaved by the sex trafficking industry worldwide.
Then I did something dreadfully unjournalistic: I bought her.
I purchased Srey Neth for $150 and another teenager, Srey Mom, for $203, receiving receipts from the brothel owners. As readers may remember, I then freed the girls and took them back to their villages.
Now I've come back to find out how they coped with freedom.
At first, it turns out, everything went well for Srey Neth. Our plan was for her to start a shop in her village, near Battambang. She invested $100 I had given her to build a shack and stock it with food and clothing. For a few months, business boomed.
The problem was her family. Srey Neth's parents and older brothers and sisters had a hard time understanding why they should go hungry when their sister had a store full of food. And her little nephews and nieces, running around the yard, helped themselves when she wasn't looking.
"Srey Neth got mad," her mother recalled. "She said we had to stay away, or everything would be gone. She said she had to have money to buy new things."
But in a Cambodian village, nobody listens to an uneducated teenage girl. Indeed, the low status of girls is the underlying reason why so many daughters are sold to the brothels. So by May, Srey Neth's shop was empty, and she had no money to restock it.
"It was our fault," her father told me, looking ashamed. "It was not Srey Neth's fault."
Srey Neth worried about her father, who was coughing up blood from tuberculosis. She also worried about her older brother, who could not afford to get married, and about the family debts, which could cost her family its land.
It was that kind of concern for her family that had led her, at the suggestion of a female cousin, to sell herself to the brothel in late 2003 and send the proceeds home.
This time, she thought about looking for work as a dishwasher in neighboring Thailand for $1.50 a day. A trafficker said he could smuggle her into Thailand and get her a dishwashing job, but only if she promised him $100.
Some 700,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year, and that's often how they end up in the sex industry: they assume debts and then, when they cannot quickly repay the money, gangs force them into brothels - where they are stuck until they are dying of AIDS.
Fortunately, I'd arranged for American Assistance for Cambodia (www.cambodiaschools.com), an aid group, to keep track of Srey Neth. It offered her something less risky: a move to Phnom Penh to learn to be a beautician. So, with money sent to the group by New York Times readers a year ago, Srey Neth started in the beauty school.
That's where I met her again. She was beaming, and she proudly told how she had learned to give manicures and haircuts. She placed third in her class in applying makeup, and she's even studying English. She bubbles with happiness in the way a teenager should.
"I'm happy with Srey Neth," said the beauty school's owner, Sapor Rendall. "She studies hard."
Ms. Rendall added that there was only one problem with Srey Neth: "She doesn't want to do massage. ... I've talked to her about it many times, but she's very reluctant."
Massages are routine in beauty shops in Cambodia and are not sexual, but for Srey Neth, they scream danger. I'm delighted.
Srey Neth cut my hair - I was her first paying customer - and she is excitedly talking about starting her own beauty shop so she can support her family again. She says she'll call it Nick and Bernie's, after me and Bernard Krisher, the chairman of American Assistance for Cambodia.
Today Srey Neth steers clear of the boys trying to flirt with her - she's still deeply distrustful of boys and men - but she has learned to laugh again. She is a happy, giggly, self-confident reminder that we should never give up on the slaves of the 21st century. I couldn't be more proud of her.
That's the good news. In my column on Saturday, I'll tell you about Srey Mom.
But what you are seeing is the same results of what happens when the government controls the wealth in a country.
Ping me if you hear about Strey Mom. I hope it is good news as well.
Every second, third, or fourth ...
The slave trade persists ...
Evil does not release its grip willingly.
A Ding! for you for accepting MSM propaganda and for being a naive individual.
I know more than a dozen expats in Thailand. Not one of them is a "sex tourist."
As I said above, the largest group of sex customers in Thailand is the Thais themselves. Same in Cambodia. Same in Vietnam.
The only one I knew was and I was shocked that he disgraced himself.
Then again men are weak.
I'm not sure it's that simple, though you do have a partial point.
Having spent a lot of time there, I can assure you that best description of Cambodia's government is "warlord kleptocracy". It isn't even close to being communist.
Yes, wealth is in the hands of the warlords, and they will do just about anything to get it: brothels, heroin trafficking, arms sales (almost openly and to the Tamil Tigers when I was there), and plain old graft and payola.
That's all an effect of the warlord society, and Cambodia is a nation of warriors, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Ironically, Nepal is having a true Maoist Communist insurrection which is aimed at the (also kleptocratic) Rana monarchy. And Nepal also has (or had) several "brothel towns" which were exclusively the domain of Nepalis and Indian traders. No Westerners, not one. They weren't allowed there. Despite those "brothel towns", there is no sex tourism in Nepal. Same in Delhi and Bombay.
The myth that Westerners are responsible for Asian prostitution is absolutely ludicrous and bizarre, though Americans are ignorant and naive enough to believe it. It starts with the locals.
Really?
Thank you for posting this thread. I look forward to reading the sequel.
E.C.
Really
That's about as profound as your previous gross generalizations. I see you have a flair for painting a great deal in the exact same shade of black.
Are you defending any business interests or is this personal for you ?
Yeah, it's personal. I've done more than Kristof to solve the problem.
My beef with you is that you've twice regurgitated that MSM line that the problem is caused by Westerners, to wit, white males. That's wrong.
You've also grossly and with no evidence or backup whatsoever stated that "three in four" tourists are in Asia for the sex trade. That is simply a flat out lie.
You expose yourself as a naive propagandist by making such egregiously false assertions.
In truth the sex trade is a local trade primarily run by and for locals.
Now, why are you on this thread? You've contributed not a whit of truth or wisdom to this point.
What have you done ?
My beef with you is that you've twice regurgitated that MSM line that the problem is caused by Westerners, to wit, white males. That's wrong. You've also grossly and with no evidence or backup whatsoever stated that "three in four" tourists are in Asia for the sex trade. That is simply a flat out lie.
You are not a very well educated reader. Your reading comprehension is inferior.
You expose yourself as a naive propagandist by making such egregiously false assertions.
I think you are uncomfortable because you are a western male and are trying to defend your presence there.
In truth the sex trade is a local trade primarily run by and for locals.
How would you know that ? You must have evidence.
Now, why are you on this thread? You've contributed not a whit of truth or wisdom to this point.
Because I hate prostitution and those who promote it, defend it, and profit from it
It's a well known fact that sex-tourism in SE Asia is a huge business. The governments turn a blind eye in return for kickbacks. In Phucket alone, there were thousands of European (a lot were from Denmark IIRC) MEN who were killed (the ratio of European MEN to women was completely out of sync with normal tourism). To defend this slavery on any level whatsoever is indefensible.
Now, you come to the table with some gross generalizations which I know from actually being there to be absolutely false. You won't admit it, but they are false.
And instead of questioning (let alone researching) your own mistaken assumptions, you just keep walking down the road of ignorance.
I'm flaming because it is knuckleheads like you who irk me. You just keep the (un)subtle insults flying while having not the faintest idea what you're talking about. You'd be a charicature of pompous naivete if you weren't so annoying.
Those there for sex tourism deserved to die
And something should be done about the travel agencies who book these sex tours.
So in other words, you are given to personal fits, your reading comprehension has not improved, and you have no evidence you have done more than the journalist quoted in this article.
Yet you are here and it seems as if you are defending this modern evil, at least in the context of the Western male tourists on the prowl for prey.
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