Prostitution in Cambodia
Prostitution in Cambodia is illegal, but prevalent. A 2008 Cambodian Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation[1] has proven controversial, with international concerns regarding human rights abuses resulting from it, such as outlined in the 2010 Human Rights Watch report.
The comprehensive 'Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation' was enacted in 2008. It punishes the trafficking of people, the managing of prostitutes, and the maintaining of a brothel, as well as soliciting in public and distributing pornography. The mere act of exchanging sex for money is not outlawed.
The Women’s Network for Unity is a Cambodian sex worker organization which was established in 2000. It lobbies for legal and human rights and better working conditions for sex workers and aims to amend the 2008 law.
In 2016 UNAIDS estimated there to be 34,000 prostitutes in the country, many from Vietnam.
History
Sexual exchange has existed in Cambodia for centuries, but the events of the 20th century created a very unstable situation. During the Khmer Rouge years (1975–1979) prostitution was completely banned and punishable by death resulting in its virtual elimination in a highly totalitarian social system. Under the new State of Cambodia (1979–1993) commercial sex started to re-emerge.
After the dismantlement of the State of Cambodia, about 20,000 male troops and civilian personnel of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) (1992–1993) arrived in Cambodia together with many NGOs and business interests from abroad, creating a new market for sexual services in a very poor country. UNTAC did little to stem the growth of prostitution in the country. Norodom Sihanouk had many reservations about the whole UNTAC operation, for the massive presence of UN foreign troops led in his eyes to the abuse and dishonor of Cambodian women.
Following UNTAC withdrawal in August 1993, demand was reduced, and a drop in the number of commercial sex establishments and sex workers was apparent. By mid-1994, the numbers started to increase again in a period of political instability. By the mid-1990s, police were harassing sex workers but also owned many of the brothels, which were divided into Vietnamese or Khmer. Workers between 15 and 18 were not uncommon, but some establishments, such as those in Toul Kork and Svay Pak, specialized in providing younger workers.
NGOs became alarmed by the growth of child prostitution along with a number of women and children abducted and sold for prostitution. By 1995 it appeared that women from some surrounding countries were entering Cambodia. International concern was raised and some raids were carried out, including one by the International Justice Mission (2004). This had the effect of displacing the workers.
The number of prostitutes in Cambodia rose from about 6,000 at the time of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, to over 20,000 after the arrival of UNTAC personnel in 1992, and declined to between 4,000 and 10,000 following their withdrawal.
Child sex tourism
Cambodia has child sex tourism present. Some children are sold by their own parents; others are lured by what they think are legitimate job offers like waitressing. Pimps are reported to imprison young children who are virgins, not putting them to work until they have been presented to a series of bidders, such as high-ranking military officers, politicians, businessmen, and foreign tourists. Young girls working in brothels are, in effect, sex slaves. They receive no money, only food, and there are armed guards to stop them from running away.
Children are often held captive, beaten, and starved to force them into prostitution. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has extradited American sex tourists home for prosecution. Vietnamese child prostitutes comprise one-third of child prostitutes in Cambodia, and Cambodian brothels employ girls and women from Vietnam.
Foreign prostitutes in Cambodia
Unofficial estimates in 2005 suggest there are as many as 15,000 prostitutes in Phnom Penh and that up to 35% of them have been smuggled into Cambodia from China or Vietnam, mostly from the southwestern provinces of Vietnam (Long An, An Giang, Song Be, Kien Giang, Dong Thap, Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City).
Violence against prostitutes
Violence against prostitutes, especially gang rape, called bauk in Cambodian, is common. Perpetrators include customers and police officers. According to some sources, such assaults are not condemned by society due to the stigmatization of prostitutes – a survey on opinions on bauk showed that only 13 percent of the males and 13 percent of the females interviewed considered that sex forced by a group of men on a prostitute was rape. The most common response – 33.4 percent of males and 40.7 percent of females – was that bauk was dangerous because of the potential transmission of sexually transmitted diseases; 12.5 percent of males and 8.1 percent of females said that gang rape against prostitutes didn't hurt anyone because the women were prostitutes and saw many men anyway; while 12.7 percent of males and 16.7 percent of females said it was better that this happened to prostitutes than to other women.
Despite the social stigma cast on prostitutes, paying for sex is very common among men in Cambodia – while Khmer culture demands female virginity, it links masculinity to sexual activity, and as a result, prostitutes are the object of most young men's sexual encounters throughout their youth and early adulthood. Sexual violence against prostitutes was also described in a 2010 Amnesty International report called Breaking the Silence – Sexual Violence in Cambodia.
Sexual health
- Wikipedia article: HIV/AIDS in Cambodia
Cambodia has a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS, one of Asia's worst-affected countries. By 1995 there were between 50,000 and 90,000 Cambodians affected by AIDS, according to a WHO estimate. Transmission is mainly through heterosexual contact. Factors contributing to this include poverty, the presence of other STIs which facilitate HIV transmission, and a highly mobile workforce. This pattern is also seen in the sex worker population. Improvement has been seen in the last decade with condom promotion. Since 2001, there has been a "100% condom program" in place, which promotes safe sex.
Opposition to sex trade
The U.S. State Department frequently condemns Cambodia for its sex trade and downgraded its categorization of the country in 2004.
Somaly Mam has fabricated many anti-trafficking stories to attract foreign aid donations. Mam ran the foundation AFESIP, which has been influential in helping the police raid hotels and kidnap their employees.
Some international commentators have noted that the garment industry in Cambodia is abusive, and efforts to remove sex workers from brothels and give them jobs making clothes can backfire if some return to the brothels.
Sex trafficking
- Wikipedia article: Sex trafficking in Cambodia
Cambodia is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking. Cambodian adults and children migrate to other countries within the region and increasingly to the Middle East for work; many are subjected to sex trafficking. Migrants using irregular migration channels, predominantly with the assistance of unlicensed brokers, are at an increased risk of trafficking, but those using licensed recruiting agents also become victims of sex trafficking. A significant number of women from rural areas are recruited under false pretenses to travel to China to enter into marriages with Chinese men, who often incur as much as $20,000 in debt to brokers facilitating the transaction; some of these women are then subjected to forced prostitution as a result of this debt.
All of Cambodia’s 25 provinces are sources of human trafficking. Sex trafficking is largely clandestine; Cambodian and ethnic Vietnamese women and girls move from rural areas to cities and tourist destinations, where they are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels and, more frequently, such “indirect” sex establishments as beer gardens, massage parlors, salons, karaoke bars, retail spaces, and non-commercial sites. Cambodian men form the largest source of demand for children exploited in prostitution; however, men from elsewhere in Asia and Europe, the United States, Australia, and South Africa travel to Cambodia to engage in child sex tourism.
Vietnamese women and children, many of whom are victims of debt bondage, travel to Cambodia and are subjected to sex trafficking. NGOs report criminal gangs to transport some Vietnamese victims through Cambodia before they are exploited in Thailand and Malaysia. Traffickers in Cambodia are most commonly family or community members or small networks of independent brokers. Endemic corruption aids and abets trafficking crimes. Some police reportedly solicit commercial sex with children. Corrupt officials facilitate cross-border trafficking, thwart progress on investigations and prosecutions, and in some cases, profit directly from establishments suspected of trafficking.
The United States Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons ranks Cambodia as a 'Tier 2' country.
Svay Pak
Sex work
Prostitution has been prevalent in Svay Pak since at least 1995, and was once "one of the most notorious places in the world for sex slavery."
Adult prostitution
Locals reported that brothels first opened in 1985, but they proliferated in the years following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in the presence of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia's peacekeeping forces. Post-war, Svay Pak's political corruption and instability led to local authorities extorting brothel owners, while the sex workers themselves "experienced raids, arrests, and rape from armed military and civil police forces operating under loose governmental control." Furthermore, managers in Svay Pak subverted the Cambodian law requiring 100% condom use for brothels, resulting in a 19% rate of HIV for workers in 2000. Though prostitution in Cambodia was not illegal in 2004, other factors contributed to "de facto criminalization" of the industry.
In March 1999, there were about 300 migrant sex workers in 25 brothels. In May 2000, there were 24 brothels employing approximately 320 women on two main Svay Pak streets. By March 2002, due to decreasing demand, there were only 17 brothels and around 279 sex workers. Clients included local Vietnamese, Khmer, Chinese, Japanese, Australians, North Americans, and Europeans. The Southern Vietnamese teens and 20-somethings working in these brothels followed established migration routes into Svay Pak after intermediaries, sometimes the girls and women's families were paid US$50–3,000 (equivalent to about $77–4,648 in 2022). Servicing 14 clients per week, workers could repay this debt in 6–24 months, resulting in high turnover—half of Svay Pak's sex workers had been there for six months of less.
The Phnom Penh Post reported that in 2005 the Cambodian government shut down the commune for film production and simultaneously excised the brothels; by 2006, "prostitutes no longer operate[d] with impunity."
Child prostitution
Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission (IJM) wrote that in 2000, Svay Pak was a lawless commune where "tiny, elementary-school-age girls" were prostituted to the public in broad daylight. One or more girls shared individual 6-by-8-foot (1.8 m × 2.4 m) cubicles where they served Western child-sex tourists.
In 2002, child prostitution was bustling in Svay Pak, driven by child sex tourism from the Western world after child prostitution in Thailand was cracked down upon. The Daily Telegraph supposed that any sex tourists in Svay Pak were there for the children, for if "a man wants an older girl, then there is plenty on offer in the brothels and bars of Phnom Penh." Most of the children were overseas Vietnamese, sold into prostitution by destitute families. Between the ages of six and 13, girls' virginity was sold for "hundreds of dollars"; repeatedly prostituted, the price diminished until reaching a low of £3 or US$4.5 (equivalent to £5.19 or $7.87 in 2021). At the turn of the 21st century, clients of child prostitution in Svay Pak expressed little fear of authorities because the brothels compensated the police; foreigners were only arrested if "a bribe is missed, or an example needs to be made of someone". In 2003, Svay Pak saw up to 50 clients per night for child prostitution.
After two years of pressure from Women's Affairs Minister Mu Sochua, women's rights groups, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, action was taken on the problem of child prostitution in Svay Pak. On 22 January 2003, Svay Pak's child brothels were raided by police. Dozens of pimps and clients were present during the raid, but none were arrested; the raid was "widely advertised in advance", and all but a few of the children had been moved to the towns of Siem Reap and Sihanoukville beforehand. By 29 January, Svay Pak was described as "a ghost town" by the Asian Human Rights Commission; by March, however, a joint Dateline NBC–IJM investigation found that Svay Pak was "the place to go if you're looking for the youngest girls." That year, IJM founder Gary Haugen worked with Cambodian officials to mount an operation to rescue children and arrest perpetrators; despite problems arising from police bribery, "a dozen suspected pimps and madams are in custody, and 37 girls [were] rescued, many under the age of 10." Upon returning to Svay Pak six months later, Dateline members were again offered prostituted children; Minister Sochua was not surprised by the reversion, blaming "extreme poverty and widespread corruption".
When Dateline followed up in 2008, the show reported that "Svay Pak is a changed place. […] Many of the brothels have closed their doors and moved out of town, replaced by restaurants, a phone store, even a children's community center serving children, some of the same children who were once exploited here."[18] However, in 2011, CNN reported that while pimps no longer swarmed every foreign man who came into town, and children were not to be seen prostituting themselves from streetside windows, the child-sex industry remained; volunteers with Agape International Missions (AIM) were still rescuing girls from the now-underground trade.[19] In 2011, a documentary was made about the problem in Svay Pak; named The Pink Room after a particular room for virgin girls; the film claimed that child prostitution remained under a new veneer of legitimate businesses like bars or coffeehouses.
In May 2015, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Holly Burkhalter, the "vice president of government relations and advocacy for [IJM]." Burkhalter pushed back against the narrative that IJM and Dateline exposed in 2003 and proclaimed that Cambodian law enforcement had rid the nation of child sex tourism (CST) in the face of international embarrassment and US Ambassador Charles A. Ray's threat of discontinuing United States foreign aid. Burkhalter detailed government efforts and statistics to back up her claims of CST eradication. Thirteen days later, the Post published a contrasting op-ed by AIM's Donald J. Brewster. Writing from Svay Pak, Brewster claimed that the commune's criminals have simply adapted to the government's efforts and continued to prostitute children aged 6–16. Agape International, Brewster wrote, had rescued 32 children from sex trafficking in the preceding year, and "[t]he highest levels of Cambodia's anti-trafficking police agree" with his evaluation of the continuing crime in Svay Pak.
ABC News traveled to Svay Pak in 2017 and found much the same situation as described by Brewster two years prior: though the number of children in sex work has dropped to 1–2% from 35% of those so working, Western men still solicited preteens for sex and the local SWAT equivalent continued to raid underage brothels. Later that year, CNN collaborated with AIM for an article that caught up with a young woman (Sephak) who was prostituted out of Svay Pak as a child. In response to these stories, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen accused the non-governmental organization of exaggerating the sex trafficking in Svay Pak, announced a police investigation into AIM, demanded that US ambassador William A. Heidt do the same, and ordered—with "the force of law"—the charity group to leave Cambodia. Cambodian official Huy Vannak suggested that the government's reaction against AIM may have stemmed from CNN accidentally implying that Sephak was ethnically Cambodian instead of being overseas Vietnamese (CNN clarified). Hun Sen relented after locals spoke up in favor of the group's work, and Brewster apologized for their faux pas; though Brewster later returned to California, AIM still provided services in Svay Pak as of March 2021.
After interviewing locals, clergy, and visiting workers, the Southeast Asia Globe said in March 2021 that "all signs suggest that the open trade practiced in the village […] has been all but stomped out". Furthermore, both the illegal drug trade and tensions between the different ethnic groups have lessened over recent years. Locals also reported that the commune's once-earned reputation leads to their discrimination outside of town. In June 2022, a business in Svay Pak was raided by police, and found to be have an underage girl offering sexual services. Bargir
Prostitution by country
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External links
- Prostitution in Cambodia: 'New law doesn't protect me' Guardian, 3 July 2009
- Groups blast US sex-work policies. Phnom Penh Post, 28 October 2010
- AMRC: Sex Work in Cambodia
- The White Building - Prostitution In Central Phnom Penh. GAIA June 2010
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