Long Pross (Photo: Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times)Fighting Sex Trafficking in Cambodia
January 3, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
Barack Obama’s presidency marks a triumph over the legacy of slavery, so it would be particularly meaningful if he led a new abolitionist movement against 21st-century slavery — like the trafficking of girls into brothels.
Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.
Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.
Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.
Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.
She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.
Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times.
Pross paid savagely each time she let a potential customer slip away after looking her over.
“I was beaten every day, sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, adding that she was sometimes also subjected to electric shocks twice in the same day.
The business model of forced prostitution is remarkably similar from Pakistan to Vietnam — and, sometimes, in the United States as well. Pimps use violence, humiliation and narcotics to shatter girls’ self-esteem and terrorize them into unquestioning, instantaneous obedience.
One girl working with Pross was beaten to death after she tried to escape. The brothels figure that occasional losses to torture are more than made up by the increased productivity of the remaining inventory.
After my last column, I heard from skeptical readers doubting that conditions are truly so abusive. It’s true that prostitutes work voluntarily in many brothels in Cambodia and elsewhere. But there are also many brothels where teenage girls are slave laborers.
Young girls and foreigners without legal papers are particularly vulnerable. In Thailand’s brothels, for example, Thai girls usually work voluntarily, while Burmese and Cambodian girls are regularly imprisoned. The career trajectory is often for a girl in her early teens to be trafficked into prostitution by force, but eventually to resign herself and stay in the brothel even when she is given the freedom to leave. In my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, I respond to the skeptics and offer some ideas for readers who want to help.
Pross herself was never paid, and she had no right to insist on condoms (she has not yet been tested for HIV, because the results might be too much for her fragile emotional state). Twice she became pregnant and was subjected to crude abortions.
The second abortion left Pross in great pain, and she pleaded with her owner for time to recuperate. “I was begging, hanging on to her feet, and asking for rest,” Pross remembered. “She got mad.”
That’s when the woman gouged out Pross’s right eye with a piece of metal. At that point in telling her story, Pross broke down and we had to suspend the interview.
Pross’s eye grew infected and monstrous, spraying blood and pus on customers, she later recounted. The owner discarded her, and she is now recuperating with the help of Sina Vann, the young woman I wrote about in my last column.
Sina was herself rescued by Somaly Mam, a trafficking survivor who started the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia to fight sexual slavery. The foundation is working with Dr. Jim Gollogly of the Children’s Surgical Center in Cambodia to get Pross a glass eye.
“A year from now, she should look pretty good,” said Dr. Gollogly, who is providing her with free medical care.
So Somaly saved Sina, and now Sina is saving Pross. Someday, perhaps Pross will help another survivor, if the rest of us can help sustain them.
The Obama administration will have a new tool to fight traffickers: the Wilberforce Act, just passed by Congress, which strengthens sanctions on countries that wink at sex slavery. Much will depend on whether Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton see trafficking as a priority.
There would be powerful symbolism in an African-American president reminding the world that the war on slavery isn’t yet over, and helping lead the 21st-century abolitionist movement.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.
Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.
Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.
Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.
She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.
Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times.
Pross paid savagely each time she let a potential customer slip away after looking her over.
“I was beaten every day, sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, adding that she was sometimes also subjected to electric shocks twice in the same day.
The business model of forced prostitution is remarkably similar from Pakistan to Vietnam — and, sometimes, in the United States as well. Pimps use violence, humiliation and narcotics to shatter girls’ self-esteem and terrorize them into unquestioning, instantaneous obedience.
One girl working with Pross was beaten to death after she tried to escape. The brothels figure that occasional losses to torture are more than made up by the increased productivity of the remaining inventory.
After my last column, I heard from skeptical readers doubting that conditions are truly so abusive. It’s true that prostitutes work voluntarily in many brothels in Cambodia and elsewhere. But there are also many brothels where teenage girls are slave laborers.
Young girls and foreigners without legal papers are particularly vulnerable. In Thailand’s brothels, for example, Thai girls usually work voluntarily, while Burmese and Cambodian girls are regularly imprisoned. The career trajectory is often for a girl in her early teens to be trafficked into prostitution by force, but eventually to resign herself and stay in the brothel even when she is given the freedom to leave. In my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, I respond to the skeptics and offer some ideas for readers who want to help.
Pross herself was never paid, and she had no right to insist on condoms (she has not yet been tested for HIV, because the results might be too much for her fragile emotional state). Twice she became pregnant and was subjected to crude abortions.
The second abortion left Pross in great pain, and she pleaded with her owner for time to recuperate. “I was begging, hanging on to her feet, and asking for rest,” Pross remembered. “She got mad.”
That’s when the woman gouged out Pross’s right eye with a piece of metal. At that point in telling her story, Pross broke down and we had to suspend the interview.
Pross’s eye grew infected and monstrous, spraying blood and pus on customers, she later recounted. The owner discarded her, and she is now recuperating with the help of Sina Vann, the young woman I wrote about in my last column.
Sina was herself rescued by Somaly Mam, a trafficking survivor who started the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia to fight sexual slavery. The foundation is working with Dr. Jim Gollogly of the Children’s Surgical Center in Cambodia to get Pross a glass eye.
“A year from now, she should look pretty good,” said Dr. Gollogly, who is providing her with free medical care.
So Somaly saved Sina, and now Sina is saving Pross. Someday, perhaps Pross will help another survivor, if the rest of us can help sustain them.
The Obama administration will have a new tool to fight traffickers: the Wilberforce Act, just passed by Congress, which strengthens sanctions on countries that wink at sex slavery. Much will depend on whether Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton see trafficking as a priority.
There would be powerful symbolism in an African-American president reminding the world that the war on slavery isn’t yet over, and helping lead the 21st-century abolitionist movement.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
11 comments:
This is one very sick world in which we live. The problem(s) is universal and definitely unsolvabled.
There are many-many different levels of pain and sufferings both physical and mental/psychological in human lives.
My ill and perhaps very condamnable wish is that this world should be NUKED to exstinction to put an end to all life forms.
One lousy creation it is. But God blamed on the devil.
Nuke yourself, but not everyone else. There are alot of good people out there, versus the evils. And if u think human should be put to extinction cuz of stuff like this, then u are out of your damn mind. Go hang yourself, if that makes u feel any better. There's one less stupid ass person left in this world. I can't believe i'm hearing this shit.hehehhehe If u don't want to go kill yourself, then i suggest u check yourself in psychiatric hospital. It might cure your depression.
"If you don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right... None of us are free, one of us are chained"
sung by Solomon Burke
11:09PM
Thank you for your "honest" response. You're mean spirited and I can tell based on your words.
Our Buddha was born in a royal family 2553 years ago. He had every thing any human longed for. But because of human suferings that he knew he was unable to accept that life even though he lived in an actual paradise on earth.
He died to pave the way for humans (to enter no more) into this suffering world. Buddha found a way to Nirvana a place he wanted all of us to follow to escape all forms of sufferings.
So I came up with another notion that to end all sufferings in this life is to find a way out. Because I'd rather prefer Heaven/paradise, or nothingness, over living with sufferings days and nights endlessly, not just me personally, but the world population as a whole.
As time is ticking can you tell me which interval of time that humans are totally free from suffering? Not even one second, my friend, that humans are not suffering. This world is a tormenting hell to hundreds, perhaps thousands of millions human beings. You can know this only if you can contemplate the whole world moment by moment of every day life. And the Lord God knows this.
Be reasonable and decent when you write. A weakly minded man is most of the time irrational and mad. Sank U, dear friend.
Qm
...
Everyone can just look at this and call it a tragic. The sad part is that we all read about it and just make a sad comment. So basically we all do the same cycle. Make judgment, or criticize. Soamly MAm and the rest of other organization that is trying to stop this savage is doing a bravery job. The best thing bloggers can do is just talk and talk like they are PHD's. No offense to other Bloggers that are really making a change in our Country!
Just look at the face of the girl, pictured, and if anyone of us is not greatly troubled/affected by the view than he/she is dead mentally.
For me, the smile on her face adds more sadness to my weeping heart. At the very same time an anger is boiling in my heart that I can as well torment a devil that did the terrible thing to such a sweet little and "defenseless" girl.
Terrible, terrible world that sickens my soul days and nights. I may choose to ignore all on going facts in human life but that doesn't divert or stop the on going terrible things from happening. It is transpiring as we breathe, non stop.
Qm
..
Qm, my speculations was right: u are CRAZY! HEHHE What does "Qm" stand for? "Question myself?" hehhehe Are u in some kinds of cult? Sounds to me that u are. We're all aware of the suffering around the world, but u need to put a end to all life form. That wld be insane. I'm not the evil one, it's u. So stop preaching us about Budha's stuff. You're not the only one that study Budhism!
Here are acouple of proverbs for your thought:
If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose the freedom and the responsibility to entails." Leo Buscaglia
Don't let the negativity given to you by the world disempower you. Instead give to yourself that which empower you." Les Brown
12:07am: Solomon Burke is full of shit. ..."None of us are free, if one of us are chained." That's crap! We are free if we choose to be free!...unless u are chained or locked up like these poor girls.
Mother fucker ah Choumaray Hun Xen!!!!!!!
Ah sdach too! see nothing of our suffering!
Please see Kristof's interview with the slave:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/01/03/opinion/1194837193498/the-face-of-slavery.html
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