Hot Zone video appears to reveal an underage girl inside a Phnom Penh brothel The sex trade in Southeast Asia continues to boom, and Cambodia is at the center. A Hot Zone video appears to reveal a dark, and all too common, side of the industry.
By Robert Padavick,
Hot Zone senior producer,
Mon Jul 17
NOTE: The Hot Zone faced a dilemma in reporting this story: how to convey the young age of sex workers in Cambodia, without identifying and potentially endangering them. To do so we have chosen to place black bars over the eyes of the young women in the following video and photo, instead of blurring out their faces. We intend to protect their identity while at the same time show first hand evidence of what appears to be underage prostitution in Cambodia.
The commercial sex industry bustles in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, with bars, restaurants and hotels often doubling as brothels. Many brothels are simply storefronts on Phnom Penh's busy streets; pimps swing open the steel doors, revealing a room with women sitting inside, waiting for clients.
On a recent night while covering Cambodia, Kevin Sites was driving the streets of Phnom Penh with his local producer and noticed one such brothel. Kevin asked his driver to stop so that he could film the scene from the car window.
The video appears to reveal one of the most shocking aspects of Cambodia's sex industry.
A group of women sits inside the room, as men loiter around the door. All of the girls look young, possibly underage. One of the girls sits on the lap of another, who is brushing her hair. She appears to be no more than 14 years old. On the video she is clearly agitated and looks fearful.
"I couldn't see the girls' faces clearly when I was filming them," Kevin says. "I didn't realize how young she looks until I was screening the tape later."
The Hot Zone provided a still photo from this video to advocacy groups working in the region. Unfortunately, they say this is a common scene in Cambodia.
One advocacy worker responded, "I dare say not one of the girls in the photo is of legal age ... a raid (on the brothel) could probably be arranged but it would just be for show. When raids like these do occur, the underage girls are often brought to a shelter but they generally leave within a few days and quite often end up back at the same brothel."
Human rights groups estimate that out of as many as 100,000 prostitutes in Cambodia, one third are underage. Cambodia's grinding poverty and social structure forces many women into prostitution. While all prostitutes in Cambodia face a number of risks, children trapped in the sex trade are particularly susceptible to horrific rights abuses and disease.
A cultural belief in Cambodia that sex with a virgin can cure sickness places underage sex workers at great risk for contracting HIV. Cambodia has made progress in reducing its HIV epidemic but recent estimates place the rate of infection at around two percent.
Additionally, Southeast Asia's tourism boom has brought an increase in sexual predators traveling to Cambodia from abroad, seeking sex with minors. The Bush administration formally acknowledged the problem in 2003 as part of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and a number of arrests of have been made since then; alleged sexual predators have been stopped at airports en route to countries such as Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand.
Officials say the Internet has also fueled a rise in sexual exploitation in Cambodia. But the majority of business in the sex trade, along with the abuse, still comes from Cambodian clients. And as this video shows, young sex workers in Cambodia are not hard to find.
5 comments:
What if someone were to go around killing all the pimps. Would that help? These parents and relatives of these kids that are involve such take matters into their own hand and start executing to show they care. Cambodia should have an underground deathsquad for these freaks. I don't see why. If they have an underground brothel to sell off the vunerables where they can't be prosecuted by law then they should have an underground law prosecutors.
Jayo!
At such a fucken young age and what do they know about sex and diesease? Most of these underage girls are force into sex slaves by someone they knew and of the high political officals and military officials and police officials are all working together as pimps to lure many more young girls into the sex trade!
So if you want to kill all the pimps in Cambodia and you better started with high officials, military officials, and polices officials!
This is what happening when United Nations and the World Bank came to help Cambodia. As the whole world can see the impact of all the help by the United Nations and the World Bank are obvious...Cambodia experience a complete destruction of the forest! More land grabbing from poor Cambodian people by AH HUN SEN! More Cambodian are dying from AIDS! More Cambodian women are resort to selling their body just to put food on the table! More cambodian children are sniffing drug in public place!
Cambodia is a country belong to bastards and bitches! If you can prove to me that Cambodia is not then Cambodia shouldn't be like this! This is a fucken hell on Earth!
I hate to be vulgar but what is happening in Cambodia right now is more vulgar than my vulgarness!
I wish the Khmer Rouge would still exists in the jungle and battle AH HUN SEN government to the end!
Hun sen is the biggest Pimp. He's getting a "cunt" of the $$$.
That's why he doesn't do anything about it.
What a reputation of Cambodia, heh? Thank You Hun Sen for your failure of leadership which lead Cambodia to humility and shame for a country that use to consider prostitution the lowest form of act. Cambodia and the world has gotten a lot more cunningly evil than ever. Greed override their diginity and honor.
We must also realize that Svay Pak are full of those kind of businesses. And guest what? Most are Vietnamese immigrants. Cambodia is a new land of opportunity for such forbibben business. Hun Sen need to become a real man and step up to erase this disgusting image of Cambodia. I'll be damn if Cambodia is known by the world for beautiful women who are whores. This is not Cambodia, we must not allow this reputation. As long as Hun Sen is the head of the house, Cambodia's images of Apsara and Bopa Angkor are turning into trashes.
Anonymous 9:41AM, stop overdosing that pissed-off pills. Calm down, slowly take your breath and count from 1-10 or 100 if needed.
The purpose of UN in Cambodia is to establish order and create peace, unity, and inject democracy and freedom into the country. This is what Cambodia had to settle for after it was destroyed by Khmer Rouge, which was a byproduct of Vietnam War. Obviosly Cambodia is chocking and coughing in the pool freedom and democracy. The side effect are drug, corruption, prostitution, and AIDS. Those things are creating social chaotics into Cambodian culture. With the addition of incompetent leadership of Hun Sen, it only help deteriates the meaning of democracy.
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