Prostitutes in Phnom Penh: Efforts to wipe out the sex trade led to abuses and and hurt the fight against HIV.Photograph by : NICOLAS ASFOURI, AFP; GETTY IMAGES
The Gazette (Montreal)
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The Economist
In eerie, deserted silence on the outskirts of Phnom Penh sits the Prey Speu detention centre. Barely legible on its grimy walls a few weeks ago were cries for help and whispers of despair from the tormented souls once crammed into its grimy cells. "This is to mark that I lived in terror under oppression," read one message.
It recalls a Khmer Rouge torture centre from the genocidal 1970s. But in fact the building was used just last year as a "rehabilitation" centre, where detained sex workers, along with beggars and the homeless, learned sewing and cooking. They were rounded up in a crackdown on trafficking for the sex industry.
At first an attempt to clean up Phnom Penh, it soon escalated into a violent campaign by the police against prostitutes and those living on the street. According to Licadho, a local human-rights group, guards at the centre beat three people to death, and at least five detainees killed themselves. Sreymoa, a trafficked sex worker detained in May 2008 with her 4-year-old daughter, recalls daily beatings, rapes and one death.
Partly to allay the previous U.S. administration's concerns about trafficking, Cambodia in February 2008 outlawed prostitution. Three months later the U.S. Department of State took Cambodia off its annual "watch list" of human-trafficking countries. But the police read the law as entitling them to lock up all sex workers, not help victims of trafficking.
Reports of abuses soon surfaced, at first denied by the government. But in August it halted the raids as the United Nations and NGOs expressed mounting concern. One worry was that they would endanger HIV/AIDS-prevention programs. The prevalence of HIV in Cambodia had fallen to 0.8 per cent of the population since the government adopted a campaign in 2001 for "100-per-cent condom" use.
Now, however, fearing the brothels where they worked would be raided, many sex workers had started plying their trade on the streets or in karaoke bars, where health- care workers could not find them to distribute condoms.
Tony Lisle, of the UN's AIDS organization, says that since the raids stopped, HIV-prevention efforts have resumed with more success. Sex workers in bars as well as brothels are to be covered, and the police to be encouraged to teach sex workers about condom use. But those campaigning for sex workers' rights have objected, fearing that this might give the police a pretext to renew the raids. Jason Barber of Licadho says that for years the government has stopped arbitrary detentions when a fuss has been made, only to restart them as soon as attention has shifted.
Indeed, just before a regional summit in Phnom Penh in late May, the police again herded up beggars, sex-workers, and drug-users and sent them back to Prey Speu, newly reopened (with the graffiti painted over). Detaining sex workers is much easier than arresting the traffickers. But the global slowdown is adding to the ranks of the unemployed.
The World Bank forecasts that 200,000 Cambodians will fall below the poverty line this year. Many will fall into prostitution or beggary, whatever the law says and high-minded donors hope.
http://www2.canada.com
The Economist
In eerie, deserted silence on the outskirts of Phnom Penh sits the Prey Speu detention centre. Barely legible on its grimy walls a few weeks ago were cries for help and whispers of despair from the tormented souls once crammed into its grimy cells. "This is to mark that I lived in terror under oppression," read one message.
It recalls a Khmer Rouge torture centre from the genocidal 1970s. But in fact the building was used just last year as a "rehabilitation" centre, where detained sex workers, along with beggars and the homeless, learned sewing and cooking. They were rounded up in a crackdown on trafficking for the sex industry.
At first an attempt to clean up Phnom Penh, it soon escalated into a violent campaign by the police against prostitutes and those living on the street. According to Licadho, a local human-rights group, guards at the centre beat three people to death, and at least five detainees killed themselves. Sreymoa, a trafficked sex worker detained in May 2008 with her 4-year-old daughter, recalls daily beatings, rapes and one death.
Partly to allay the previous U.S. administration's concerns about trafficking, Cambodia in February 2008 outlawed prostitution. Three months later the U.S. Department of State took Cambodia off its annual "watch list" of human-trafficking countries. But the police read the law as entitling them to lock up all sex workers, not help victims of trafficking.
Reports of abuses soon surfaced, at first denied by the government. But in August it halted the raids as the United Nations and NGOs expressed mounting concern. One worry was that they would endanger HIV/AIDS-prevention programs. The prevalence of HIV in Cambodia had fallen to 0.8 per cent of the population since the government adopted a campaign in 2001 for "100-per-cent condom" use.
Now, however, fearing the brothels where they worked would be raided, many sex workers had started plying their trade on the streets or in karaoke bars, where health- care workers could not find them to distribute condoms.
Tony Lisle, of the UN's AIDS organization, says that since the raids stopped, HIV-prevention efforts have resumed with more success. Sex workers in bars as well as brothels are to be covered, and the police to be encouraged to teach sex workers about condom use. But those campaigning for sex workers' rights have objected, fearing that this might give the police a pretext to renew the raids. Jason Barber of Licadho says that for years the government has stopped arbitrary detentions when a fuss has been made, only to restart them as soon as attention has shifted.
Indeed, just before a regional summit in Phnom Penh in late May, the police again herded up beggars, sex-workers, and drug-users and sent them back to Prey Speu, newly reopened (with the graffiti painted over). Detaining sex workers is much easier than arresting the traffickers. But the global slowdown is adding to the ranks of the unemployed.
The World Bank forecasts that 200,000 Cambodians will fall below the poverty line this year. Many will fall into prostitution or beggary, whatever the law says and high-minded donors hope.
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