| ACR Weekly Newsletter Vol.2, No. 5 (29/01/2003) | ||||
| The Younger the Better: 19,250 Children trapped in Cambodia's Sex Industry |
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Appeal: The Child Sex Industry in Cambodia Myanmar: Blinded Child Soldier returns home
HRW: Children in India's Silk Industry [Report]
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A
UNICEF survey concluded that 35 percent of Cambodia's 55,000 prostitutes
are children under the age of 16. The oldest girls in the sex industry
today are teenagers, says Sao Chhoeurth, who works with AFESIP, a French
NGO that rescues and rehabilitates child prostitutes.
With recent media attention on pedophiles such as Gary Glitter in Cambodia and Matthew Kelly in the United States of America, child prostitution and pornography have suddenly become extremely important to Cambodia's cultural image. With the death of Pol Pot and the end of the Khmer regime in 1998, Cambodia prospered as a sex attraction for the many pedophiles keen on exploring new avenues after Thailand, Vietnam and other South-East Asian nations. The main brothel areas in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, are Toul Kork, Keo Chandra and Svay Pak. Svay Pak, a dusty village 11 km north of Phnom Penh was a thriving village with 50 odd brothels and child prostitutes as young as 6 years old till last Wednesday when the police raided the village. The village which received at least 50 tourists every night, who paid a measly US$ 3 for sex with a child, and scores of locals is now a ghost town. No one was arrested although there were dozens of pimps and customers in the brothels at the time of the raid. |
Phnom Penh police chief General Soun Chheangly
said a decision was made to shut down Svay Pak becuase it's bad name that
affects the Cambodia's cultural reputation.
It took continuous campaigning by women's rights groups and the Mu Sochua, Cambodia's women's affairs minister, for more than 2 years and a high profile ASEAN meeting, for the Svay Pak raid to occur and the brothels to close down. Only a few of the child prostitutes released from the brothels have reached AFESIP and the Ministry of Social Welfare. The majority have been sent on to brothels in other tourist centres, including Siem Reap, the service town for the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex, and Sihanoukville, a popular beach resort in the south of the country. The police action had been widely advertised in advance. It is no secret that the brothels in Cambodia flourish because of their friendly relations with influential officials in the Hun Sen government. Pimps are reported to imprison young children who are virgins and not put them to work until they've been presented to a series of bidders such as high-ranking military officers, politicians, businessmen and foreign tourists. Much of this lucrative industry is controlled by senior police and military officers, and successful arrests/prosecutions are rare. Evidence is mysteriously lost, brothels are tipped off before raids, and pimps slip their handcuffs on the way to court. |
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While I was at Svay Pak: Lives of Child Prostitutes in Cambodia |
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The young girls working in brothels like those in
Svay Pak are , in effect, sex slaves; they receive no money, only food,
and armed guards stop them running away.
Chantala, possibly 14,
recounts that her a woman approached her aunt and promised to give her a
job as a live-in cleaner at a shop in Phnom Penh. The shop turned out to
be a brothel in Svay Pak. Her first customer she recounts was a Chinese
man who beat her till she was unconscious because she refused to have sex
with him. He then tore her clothes and raped her. She worked everyday from
9 a.m. to 3 a.m. and still owed a huge sum to the brothel owner. Avy, 8-years-old, was sold into the sex trade after being raped by her stepfather and nine other men. She was hit across the face and given electric shocks when she refused to have sex with clients. When she grew sleepy after working long hours, the pimp thrust chillies in her eyes. Chantala and Avy are two among the thousands of young children who are being ruthlessly violated every day of their precious lives. Being treated worse than slaves for the luxuries of influential politicians, the children in Cambodia's brothels hope that the international humanitarian community will come to their rescue. Note: Both Chantala and Avy are in the care of AFESIP. Pierre Legros, the director of AFESIP expressed concern that though the activity at Svay Pak has decreased after the police raid by 90 percent, the trade has shifted temporarily to other regions within Cambodia. It is has not yet been driven out of the country. He feels that there is a dire need for a national strategy to combat child prostitution in Cambodia or else each raid will only result in a shift of trade from one place to another. [This article is sourced from the Independent, UK] |
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Appeal to Prime Minister Hue Sen
Write to Cambodian Prime Minister Hue Sen
urging him to work towards a national plan to
combat child prostitution and sex tourism in Cambodia. |
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| Myanmar: Blinded child soldier returned home |
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 [Child Soldiers Training in Myanmar; Source: ImagesAsia] |
Maung Aung Myo Thant, 15-years-old, was
kidnapped while on his way home from his workplace in Rangoon last July
and forced to join the National army.
He was locked up for two days in the family quarters of a soldiers recruitment camp and thereafter transferred to the Taungdwinggyi Soldiers Training School. He received basic military trainings at the school led by Colonel Thein Lwin. While at the school he became ill and was wrongly diagnosed. As a result of which the injection he was given blinded him. An army officer took him back to his home in Central Myanmar on the 3rd of December, 6 months after his kidnapping. Local people tried to treat him with an eye specialist but in vain. Maung Kyaw Thet Lwin, also a 15-year-old boy, who was working in Rangoon was kidnapped by the army while on his way home at a bus station and forced to join the army. His parents learnt only recently that he had been sent off to the Phaunggyi Training School to receive military training. They were, however, not allowed to see their son on reaching the training school. With children as young as 11-years old working as child labourers in Rangoon, kidnapping of children by the army at bus stations, ports and train stations is becoming everyday practice, reported the Democratic Voice of Burma. The violations that children face each day of their lives in Myanmar is becoming more and more evident but the international community has yet to pressurize the military regime in Myanmar to put an end to these violations. [This article is sourced from the Democratic Voice of Burma] |
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Reports |
Children in India's Silk Industry: HRW [Report] |
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n report recently released by the New York
based Human Rights Watch revealed the rampant prevalence of bonded child
labour in the silk industry in India.
The 85 page report investigates bonded child labourers working in three major silk producing Indian states, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The report reveals that children working in the silk industry have not been highlighted so far because of the sympathy for and pressure of the employers. Though children working in the carpet industry in Uttar Pradesh and those working in the match and fireworks industries in Tamil Nadu have been identified and rescued from bonded labour, children in the silk industry have not received similar attention and help. The report says that the Indian government not only denies the existence of child labourers in the country but has shifted it's efforts towards awareness building instead of rescuing children trapped in bonded labour and persecuting the employers. In it's recommendations to the government of India, HRW stresses the need for the government to ensure the implementation of bonded labour and child labour laws in the country and hold violating parties responsible for their violations. Complete Report: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india/ |
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| ILO: Global Employment Trends [Study] |
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In the new study, the ILO estimates that the
number of unemployed worldwide grew by 20 million since the year 2000 to
reach a total of 180 million at the end of last year. Asia suffered most severely from the bursting ICT bubble, which cut exports to the industrialized countries. The report warned that child labour and human trafficking were still major issues for the Asian region as a whole. The report mentions that countries such as Nepal and Colombia were particularly hard hit because of ongoing armed conflict in these countries. The report recommends that in order to counter the growing unemployment rates worldwide, countries will have to focus their energies on developing pro-poor and pro-jobs policies that will ensure minimum wages and minimum age. Complete report: http://www.ilocarib.org.tt/news/2003/global_emp_trends.htm |
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| ECPAT: Child Sex Abuse and Social Customs [Study] |
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A recent report released by the
Bangkok-based international child
protection campaign group, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child
Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes), found that
socially accepted customs are being used to shelter child sexual abuse in
various countries.
The report highlights that though child marriages are unlawful in many countries, they are rampant in most parts of South Asia and the Middle East. This form of child abuse which allows elder men to have sex with young children under the name of marriage is acceptable in most societies where parents are keen on getting rid of their girl children at a young age. In a lot of the cases, young girls are forced to have sex sex with older men under the name of marriage and are later abandoned. Another form of child abuse that is rampant but least talked about is the use of underage boys as homosexual prostitutes in various parts of South Asia, particularly in Pakistan. The report states that children caught in this situation cannot escape from it nor can they approach the police for assistance because they are considered social outcasts. The report also mentions that the internet has played an active role in the increase of child pornography and prostitution. Pornography material is available freely on the internet and most pimps now have their own website through which they advertise and promote child prostitution. |
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