Posted on 02/18/2005 6:23:05 PM PST by Lorianne
POIPET, Cambodia—When I describe sex trafficking as, at its worst, a 21st-century version of slavery, I’m sure plenty of readers roll their eyes and assume that’s hyperbole.
It’s true that many of the girls who are trafficked around the world go voluntarily or under coercion too modest to be fairly called slavery. But then there are girls like Srey Rath.
A couple of years ago, at age 15 or 16 (she’s unsure of her birth date), Srey Rath decided to go to work in Thailand for two months, so that she could give her mother a present for the Cambodian new year.
But the traffickers who were supposed to get her and four female friends jobs as dishwashers smuggled them instead to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. There, three of the girls, including Srey Rath, were locked up in a karaoke lounge that operated as a brothel and ordered to have sex with customers. Srey Rath indignantly resisted.
“So the boss got angry and hit me in the face, first with one hand and then with the other,” she remembers. “The mark stayed on my face for two weeks.”
That was the beginning of a hell. The girls were forced to work in the brothel 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and they were never paid or allowed outside. Nor were they allowed to insist that customers use condoms.
“They just gave us food to eat, but they didn’t give us much because the customers didn’t like fat girls,” Srey Rath said.
The girls had been warned that if they tried to escape, they could be murdered. But they were so desperate that late one night, after they had been locked up in the 10th-floor apartment where they were housed, they pried a strong board off a rack used for drying clothes. Then they balanced the board, which was just 5 inches wide, from their window to a ledge in the next building, a dozen feet away.
Srey Rath and four other girls inched across, 10 floors above the pavement.
“We thought that even if we died, it would be better than staying behind,” Srey Rath said. “If we stayed, we would die as well.” (I talked to another of the Cambodians, Srey Hay, and she confirmed the entire account.)
Once on the other side, they took the elevator down and fled to a police station. But the police weren’t interested and tried to shoo them away at first—and then arrested them for illegal immigration. Srey Rath spent a year in a Malaysian prison, and when she was released, a Malaysian policeman drove her away—and sold her to a taxi driver, who sold her to a Thai policeman, who sold her to a Thai brothel.
Finally, after two more months, Srey Rath fled again and made it home this time to the embraces of her joyful family. An aid group, American Assistance for Cambodia, stepped in to help Srey Rath, outfitting her with a street cart and an assortment of belts and keychains to sell. That cost only $400, and now she’s thrilled to be earning money for her family.
Over the last five years, the United States has begun to combat sex trafficking, with President Bush’s State Department taking the lead. But there’s so much more that could be done, particularly if the White House became involved. More scolding and shaming of countries with major sex trafficking problems, like Cambodia and Malaysia, would go a long way to get them to clean up their act.
It’s mostly a question of priorities. No politician defends sex trafficking, but until recently, no one really opposed it much, either. It just wasn’t on the agenda. If, say, 100 people in each congressional district demanded that their representatives push this issue, sex trafficking would end up much higher on our foreign policy agenda—and the resulting ripple of concern around the globe would emancipate tens of thousands of girls.
You’ll understand the stakes if you ever cross the border from Thailand to Cambodia at Poipet: Look for a cart with a load of belts. You’ll see a beaming teenage girl who will try to sell you a souvenir, and you’ll realize that talk about sex “slavery” is not hyperbole—and that the shame lies not with the girls but with our own failure to respond as firmly to slavery today as our ancestors did in the 1860s.
Can't make this kind of stuff up.
One of the worst things in the world: sex slavery. Our govt. should strongly condemn it and impose sanctions on countries that allow it.
Hey now, wait a dang minute. If Salma Hayek wants to make me her sex slave, the government should butt out.
But...a few years before, it was Mr and Mrs Bill Clinton thru the U.N., trying to "legalize" 3rd world prostitution; because it was the only way many poor families could earn $$$; so they said.
These are savage peoples with savage religions. They should be colonized, Christianized, and set free.
And umm, what would that entail? What is "colonized"? Massacred and forced to conform at gunpoint?
Like the Philippines?
This is where much of the tsunami aid $ went and the charity $ those misguided among you gave.
All this money does is feed these devils. The governments of these nations in this part of the world are beyond corrupt.
Your charity $, and our taxpayer $ handed out as "aid" to these nations keep these corrupt people in power. This is how they treat women.
I find that hard to believe. But I would bet that a minority of men frequent "these places",...allot.
You could be right, but, considering that this industry is a multi-billion dollars... How much of a minority is it?
All the numbers above are pure conjecture, but when you cook it down my guess would be between 2 and 5 percent. Much less in the US and Europe, due to our continentally sophisticated slutty behavior, and large number of drinking establishments. After all if the milk is free why pay for the cow?
From the documentaries that I saw on the Science channel.. there were plenty of Americans going over there just for those reasons. Many were middle age business types, few doctors and what surprises me is that many of these men admitted to being married. Likewise for countires i.e. Bulgaria and other ex-soviet bloc countries... Americans and Europeans go over. Huge sections of so-called red light districts. These girls thinking they were getting jobs and to late they find out they have been sold.
Your math is a conjecture and I guess its' larger than what you quoted. Maybe not a majority.
Yes, I know our current society is rather loose and sex is given freely. So I don't understand why men want to pay for it when it seems to be given rather freely, besides the obvious.. very young which I believe its' still illegal here.
Forget Cambodia, ever wonder what happens to blonde-haired, blue-eyed runaways from small-town USA ?
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