In ‘Red Light,’ a Portrait of the Sex Trade

Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
New York Tuesday, 29 June 2010

“The drunk chief of police who raped my daughter came to my home.”

A sex trade documentary that was four years in the making and took the collaboration of a politician and a former sex slave turned advocate premiered in New York last week, highlighting an ongoing problem fed in part by collaboration of society, officials and police.

“Red Light” shows how parents sell daughters, government officials use secret brothels to procure sex and the extent to which the trade exposes children to abuse.

The film, which took more than four years to make, was produced in part by actress Lucy Liu and features activist Mam Somaly, who escaped the brothels as a girl, and opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua, who was once a minister for women’s affairs.

Filmmakers used hidden cameras and took risks in brothels to bring back footage from the sex trade to increase awareness of the dangers of exploitation.

“When I saw the movie, I remembered every word those children said,” Mu Sochua told VOA Khmer after the screening. “I can still smell the mud at the brothels I passed on my way to Poipet. I can never forget the tears and emotion of these girls, who described to me their hardships and their experiences, [such as] losing their virginity for the first time, after they were sold to brothels, and being forced to serve more than 10 clients a day. We, as parents and as responsible people, cannot stand for that.”

“Red Light” examines betrayal by neighbors and friends who lure children into the sex trade. A 14-year-old girl describes her rape and subsequent sale by a neighbor to a brothel. She is then sold from one brothel to another. Two girls are sold by their own parents into brothels.

Another girl, Ani, 13, was forced to sleep with high-ranking government officials in a brothel disguised as a noodle shop.

“The drunk chief of police who raped my daughter came to my home,” Ani’s father says in the film. “He told me I should let him sleep with my daughter again. “I would never sell my daughter. You would have to kill me.”

“Red Light” is also a reminder of the loopholes in Cambodia’s legal frameworks that allow perpetrators to buy their way out of trouble.

“We need to ask ourselves, mostly men, why do men have this urge to exploit a little child, whether it’s a boy or a girl,” Adi Ezroni, one of three directors, said at the screening. “And that’s really the issue that we have to speak about.”


Film production team took risks from those who benefit from the business. They had to use hidden cameras to film in the lucrative karaokay parlors and brothels. Film makers hope their film will help raise more awareness of the danger of sexual exploitation children face.

“With enough of this education and exposure we are able to change both people’s mindset, law...and to decrease demand because as far as I am concerned kids should never ever be raped and touched by anybody,” film maker Guy Jacobson told journalists. “I don’t care who the kid is and I don’t care who the adult is, there is absolutely no scenario in which it is okay for an adult to have sex with a kid; period.”

However, victims get discriminated when they try to integrate back into society.

“I would like to make a new appeal to please have a pity on those people both the children and women. It was not their choice to fall into this trap of prostitution,” said Mu Sochua. “Once the society discriminates against them, they will lose their future.”
The premiere drew a wide range of audience including celebrities and rights activists.

“I just feel that we need to take some actions and that a lot of countries need to get involved than being involved now,” Cynthia Kirchner, an actress and model, told VOA Khmer. “The girls are so strong to have gone through what they’ve gone through and to tell their story and they are just so brave and I think that everyone that has involved has done such a good job in getting their story told.”

Petra Nemcova - Nemcova Haunted By Cambodia Charity Trip

15/04/2008
ContactMusic.com

Supermodel-turned-humanitarian PETRA NEMCOVA was horrified after witnessing first-hand the brutality of human trafficking during a recent visit to Cambodia.

The Czech Republic-born model was so jarred by the experience she has teamed up with Southeast Asian-based charity the Somaly Mam Foundation in an effort to raise awareness for the devastating crimes.

She says, "It makes me so angry. Girls and boys get sold as young as four-years-old and are put in animal cages. Some of them never see the light anymore. We met this girl who was 13 and a pimp made her lose her right eye. The words 'pimp' and 'child' should never be in the same sentence."

Nemcova was so moved by the Foundation, which seeks to rescue women and girls from the horrors of a life in brothels or on the streets, she wore a dress hand-sewn by women rescued by the group to a recent charity gala.

The model suffered her own hardship during a 2004 vacation to Thailand, surviving multiple broken bones and internal injuries when a tsunami hit land, killing her then-boyfriend, photographer Simon Atlee, and leaving her stranded for hours in a palm tree.

Siem Reap: 3 pimps arrested

24-09-2007
By Kang Kallyan
Cambodge Soir
Translated from French by Luc Sâr

A police raid at guest houses in the temple city led to the arrest of several traffickers and the release of some minor young girls.

Nine young girls were freed on Thursday 20 September, during a police raid in 2 guest houses: the “Chhbar Ampov 1”and the “Chhbar Ampov 2,” located in Svay Dangkum commune, Siem Reap city. The police acted on tips provided the provincial minor protection department. Three people, suspected of detaining the minor girls for prostitution purpose, were arrested. They are also in charge of these guest houses. In front of the police, the suspects declared that these girls are household servants. However, the police retrieved condoms in all the 32 rooms in the guest houses during their search. After the confrontation with the police, the rescued young girls found refuge at the department of Women affairs. Chea Heng, the chief of the minor protection department, hopes that a quick sentencing will be given by the court in this case.

If only we could see her face

In an ideal world, there would be no child prostitution and we wouldn't need to blur this girl's face. But the reality is...

July 29, 2007
The Electric New Paper (Singapore)

WHEN her father died, teenager Kong Bopha (not her real name), left her village in Cambodia for Phnom Penh, where a neighbour promised her work in a restaurant.

With a job, she could help support her mother, three sisters and brother.

The dream was short-lived.

After she arrived at the capital, the neighbour sold her to a brothel where she was beaten and forced to have sex with men every day.

Several times, the brothel owner had a doctor stitch up her vagina to fool clients into thinking she was a virgin, to get a higher price for her.

In Manila, pretty 13-year-old Jaydee (not her real name) took a job at a bar near the House of Representatives in Quezon City.

One evening, she noticed a government official eyeing her.

The next day, her 14th birthday, she was given what she thought was medicine. She passed out and when she woke up she was naked and lying in a strange bed.

Next to her was the official's son. It was his birthday too, and Jaydee and her virginity were his birthday present.

Jaydee was then forced to work as a drug courier and only escaped some weeks later. Now in a girls' shelter, she is too frightened to go to the police. 'I do not believe there is justice,' she said.

In recent years, the child sex industry has expanded across Asia, reported the Reader's Digest in its August edition.

A 2006 report by the US-based Asia Foundation estimates that almost 20,000 children are sexually exploited in Cambodia.

The Philippines National Plan of Action estimates that there are between 60,000 and 75,000 children involved in the sex trade in the country.

Non-governmental organisations have put the number closer to 100,000.

In India, where daughters are often seen as a liability by their families, the US State Department estimates that up to 500,000 children under age 16 are exploited in the sex trade.

'ALMOST A MILLION'

'There is a press-down-pop-up phenomenon: Even when the sexual exploitation is tackled effectively in one country, it may emerge insidiously in another country,' Prof Vitit Muntarbhorn of Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, a longtime United Nations human rights special rapporteur, told the Reader's Digest.

Because sex with children is illegal and clandestine, no one knows for sure how many are involved. However, the magazine estimates that close to a million children are involved in the sex trade across Asia.

Three developments have led to this situation:

• Greater demand for child sex from Asian men. Some Asian men want sex with children, especially with virgins, because they believe that it will bring them good health, long life and good luck, and protect them from HIV/AIDS.
• Indifference among lawmakers and enforcers. In most Asian countries, sex with a child under 16 years is a crime. So is employing anyone under 18 in the sex trade. Yet prosecution hasn't seemed to reduce the problem.
• Widespread corruption. Criminals responsible for the traffic in Asian children routinely buy off police officers, judges and lawmakers.

There are some success stories though.

Kong Bopha spent a year on the streets of Phnom Penh. In March 1999, aged 17, she was arrested by police, who handed her over to social workers. She was angry and dejected and was suffering from typhoid and colitis.

After four years of counselling, she found a job in a garment factory. And five years after her nightmare began, she married a young man from her home village.

Her happy ending has not lessened her anger.

She said: 'People like that brothel owner must be punished so that other girls will not have to go through what I did.'