Cambodia Fashion

REFILE - ADDING DATE Contestants pose during the finals of a modelling competition in Phnom Penh October 9, 2009.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA FASHION)

A model walks down the runway during the finals of a modelling competition in Phnom Penh. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA FASHION)

A model wears a creation by Vietnamese fashion designer Kelly Bui, during Bui's 2009 Autumn-Summer collection entitled, ' My Fair Lady', in Hanoi, Vietnam, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.(AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)

"[Sam Rainsy] called the US to fire a missile to Tuol Krasaing": Hun Xen

During a speech given yesterday for the 30th anniversary of the National Bank of Cambodia, Hun Sen once again raised the issue of opposition leader Sam Rainsy calling the US to fire a missile on his house in 1998. “In 1998, H.E. Sam Rainsy called on the US to fire a missile to Tuol Krasaing, Takhmao city,” Hun Sen was quoted by The Cambodia Daily as saying. He also added: “Don’t be mistaken, the US missile fired into Cambodia, it will not be just Hun Sen who will die, and he called on the US to invade Cambodia… it is not a small thing for a Cambodian to call a foreigner to fire on our country and it is not a normal thing… It means that he called a foreigner to invade our country in order to shoot Hun Sen to death.” In his speech, Hun Sen also warned a man, whom he declined to name, who urged police and soldiers to “turn their weapons on the government.”

The Cambodia Daily also received an email clarification from opposition leader Sam Rainsy who indicated that Hun Xen was taking out of context the remarks he made in 1998, following the grenade attack on Sam Rainsy and peaceful protesters in front of the National Assembly. “At a public meeting a few days after the Aug 20, 1998, incident at the Interior Ministry, I said that terrorists in any country should not feel safe and happy because there will be no impunity for them. I was referring to the US reprisals against terrorist groups in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks [on US embassies] in East Africa… Therefore, what I said… was a warning to Cambodian leaders, especially Hun Sen, that they should stop supporting state terrorism,” The Cambodia Daily quoted Sam Rainsy’s email.

In regards to the unnamed man mentioned by Hun Sen, The Cambodia Daily reported that in 1998, Sam Rainsy called on government troops “to rise up together and turn your gun point to get Hun Sen to step down from his position.”

Hun Sen’s mention of the issues above comes at a time when opposition MPs are criticizing the draft criminal law during debates on the National Assembly floor. In his speech, Hun Sen stressed that the behavior he mentioned above should be changed, if there is anything, a talk should be initiated and the court system should be used. However, he said that when he uses the court, he is accused of dismissing rights. Hun Sen said that he did not use bullets or handcuffs, he only used the court system to sentence them (his opponents), while the latter called on others to fire on Cambodia and that these people have not been dealt with yet.

'No Thanks, I'm Not a Sex Tourist'

A sex worker in Phnom Penh. Credit: UNAIDS/S. Noorani

And yet, how I ended up doing a bit of business with a Cambodian prostitute.

It was not my intention to pay for the services of a prostitute in Cambodia. But it was the least I could do.

My dalliance with that young woman at dawn was spontaneous, infinitely relieving and wholly chaste. It capped, for me, a vicarious romp through the Southeast Asian nation's booming sex industry, a first-hand look at the desperation born out of decades of corruption and suffering.

Hardship and human trafficking

Cambodia can be a very grim place. It was carpet bombed by the United States during the Vietnam War, followed by genocide led by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. The latter atrocity killed nearly 2 million Cambodians -- nearly a quarter of the population. Today about half of the population of 14 million is under 20 years old.


The last three decades have seen Cambodia claw its way back to some sort of normalcy. Transparency International still ranks it as one of the world's most corrupt nations, but that hasn't kept the tourists out. With the magnificent Angkor Wat complex of temples in the north and miles of pristine beaches in the south, Cambodia has seen an increasing number of visitors in the past 10 years as tourism has become a pillar of the country's meager economy.

But economic development and the growth in tourism have brought along with them a marked increase in human trafficking. The UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) cites the rise in tourism and an imbalance in urban-rural development in the past decade as contributing factors to human trafficking. With few jobs in the countryside and a young population earning barely US$1.50 a day, desperate families may sell their children to traffickers, who promise employment opportunities in well-travelled urban areas such as Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.

Many of those trafficked are women and children who end up selling sex in brothels, beer gardens and karaoke bars in these cities. But just because someone is a prostitute does not mean she is a victim of trafficking. The exact numbers are difficult to pin down, but a U.N. official told me that of the 20,000-30,000 prostitutes working in Cambodia, probably about 10 per cent consider themselves trafficked. That number likely does not include women who were tricked or fell into prostitution through other circumstances, however.

Sex tourist magnet

Nevertheless, the industry thrives. Patrick Stayton, the Cambodia field office director of International Justice Mission (IJM), a faith-based human-rights agency, says the quick-cash nature of prostitution has made it a generally accepted part of the culture in Cambodia. As a result, the country has become an attractive destination for so-called "sex tourists" -- those who travel abroad to fulfill their carnal needs.

And with such low overhead to start selling sex, Stayton says, supply can easily keep up with demand: "For a brothel, you just need someplace with a roof over it and a ratty old mattress. I mean, the guys that come in to support this kind of thing, they're not looking for five-star hotels. They'll do it basically anywhere."

Though it's the Caucasian sex tourists who stand out, the majority of johns in Cambodia are Asian. Unlike Westerners, who usually travel alone and find what they're looking for on the streets, beaches and in expat bars, Stayton says, tourists from China, Japan or Korea tend to travel in groups, visiting entertainment establishments like karaoke bars and massage parlors on pre-arranged tours, "because that's more their style."

'Boom-boom' for sale

The southwestern city of Sihanoukville -- with large chunks of land and even several islands owned by foreigners -- is a top destination for tourists of all kinds, but especially sex tourists. I was unaware of its notoriety when I boarded the bus in Phnom Penh with a friend to spend a few days there.

Sihanoukville, a sister city to Seattle, is home to Cambodia's lone international port and sits on a peninsula jutting into the Gulf of Thailand. In 2005, the New York Times called it the "next Phuket".

We had been in town less than ten minutes before an enterprising young man driving us to our hotel in his tuk-tuk (a motorised rickshaw) asked if we were interested in some "boom-boom," the not-so-secret code word for paid-for sex. It would be the first of countless offers we would decline.

Lawless law enforcement

Prostitution is technically illegal in Cambodia. It was criminalised last year with the passage of the Law on the Suppression of Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, a move widely seen as an attempt by the Cambodian government to win favour with the U.S. State Department, which duly removed Cambodia from its annual human-trafficking watch list shortly after the law's passage.

The law itself is ambiguous at best and may even do more harm than good. The prostitutes and victims of trafficking -- those whom the law is supposedly intended to help -- reportedly are, in practice, the targets of widespread and often violent crackdowns, as police have no means or real motivation to distinguish between trafficked and non-trafficked sex workers. A recent article in The Economist cited reports of women and children who were beaten and raped while in detention following a crackdown, and suggested the crackdowns were negatively impacting progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS in Cambodia.

The State Department's 2009 report, which placed Cambodia back onto the trafficking watch-list, says that despite numerous raids on brothels, police failed "to arrest, investigate or charge any large number of persons for human-trafficking offenses."

The report continues: "Corruption is pervasive in Cambodia and it is widely believed that many individuals, including police and judicial officials, are both directly and indirectly involved in trafficking. Some local police and government officials are known to extort money or accept bribes from brothel owners, sometimes on a daily basis, in order to allow the brothels to continue operating."

Exploited children

The price of boom-boom for a Caucasian in Sihanoukville starts at about US$5, but $25 can usually get you a partner for an entire night. Oral sex, or "yum-yum," costs between $3 and $5. Generous customers might give tips of 100 to 200 per cent.


It's not hard to spot the sex tourists in Sihanoukville. Often sitting at tables surrounded by scantily clad ladies, they'll try to make awkward conversation until their solicitor's vocabulary has been exhausted and then surreptitiously saunter off, either to a room in the back or somewhere otherwise unseen. Or you'll see them walking down the street usually towering over the petite woman or women at their side, maybe holding hands to give themselves the impression that this relationship is more pure than it actually is.

These are the johns that few of the NGOs or human-rights groups are concerned about. Though maybe a little sad, these sex tourists are merely taking advantage of a quasi-legitimate service being offered, and no one really complains about the money they bring in.

What groups like IJM and Action Pour Les Enfants are really concerned about is child-sex tourism. The poverty and lawlessness of Cambodia has created an environment relatively friendly to pedophiles, who can find victims as young as 6 if they look in the right places. Sihanoukville indeed has some of those places, though indications are that they are not as prevalent as they once were.

It's impossible to know exactly how many child prostitutes -- defined as under 15 by the 2008 Sexual Exploitation Law -- are currently working in Cambodia. And opinions differ as to how much the situation has improved. IJM's Stayton says "pedophiles have to be more careful these days, because they know they can’t walk around as freely as they have in the past," though he says opportunities for pedophiles have not necessarily decreased.

Education campaigns have helped. The Childsafe program of Friends International, a child-advocacy NGO, trains and certifies Cambodian tuk-tuk drivers to be more aware of the dangers children face. Other countries, including Canada, have laws banning their citizens from travelling abroad to have sex with minors. Canada has caught two such offenders since the law was strengthened in 2002 -- Vancouver man Donald Bakker, who pleaded guilty in 2005, and Kenneth Robert Klassen, who is facing 35 sex-tourism-related charges. Canada, however, has also been criticised for not enforcing its law strongly enough.

Taking the tour


My time in Sihanoukville did not bring me into contact with any pedophiles, as far as I know. But my friend and I were given a tour of the town by a couple of local expatriates who are well familiar with some of the seedy hot spots.

The port, the point of entry for horny sailors, is Sihanoukville's cheapest and dirtiest red-light district and is located a few kilometres outside downtown. It's a dirt strip about 200 metres long, lined with shacks and huts with fluorescent red and blue lights dangling from the eaves and rows of catcalling women.

We rode our rented motorbikes from one end to the other, and the second we stopped to turn around we were swarmed by ladies desperate for work. One jumped on the back of my bike and said, "Let's go!" It was the beginning of the rainy season and most of the clientele had dried up, so two white guys in the middle of the night looked like hot commodities. They surely felt more than disappointment when we sped away.



Back in town, at a brothel in the Blue Mountain area, we sipped cans of Anchor Beer ("An-chore", not to be confused with Angkor, Sihanoukville's local brew) as a pleasant young lady kept us company, all but begging us to take her into one of the rooms in back, as cockroaches the size of my thumb scuttled across the dirt floor underfoot. She said she was Vietnamese, as were most of the girls at this place. Cambodia scores an unholy human-trafficking trifecta as a country of transit, origin and destination for victims. As many as 80 percent of the prostitutes trafficked to Cambodia are from Vietnam.

We gave our hostess a couple dollars for her time. She smiled, gave us each a hug and waved as we rode away.

Help in an emergency

On my last night in town we went down to Serendipity Beach (Ochheuteal Beach) to watch the sun rise. The beach is known for its ladyboys, but was mostly empty by the time we got there. I had a bus to catch at 7:45 AM and it was getting to be time to go. We gathered our things and mounted our motorbikes, but I was missing something... my keys! How they fell out of my pocket, I have no idea, but a full-scale search ensued, retracing steps and sifting through sand.


I was growing more and more anxious; the bike rental place had our passports, and without the keys I had no way to return the bike. A couple of prostitutes and some unseemly men had appeared. My friend said, "You know, if you leave the bike here, it'll be gone in 10 minutes." I knew.



Sensing the emergency, the prostitutes kindly joined our search. Just as hopelessness was setting in and I prepared to give up, one of the girls exclaimed and held up a sandy set of keys... my keys! Sweet relief. I took the keys and pulled a crisp $5 bill out of my wallet and handed it to my savior. She blushed and declined at first, asking if I wouldn't rather go over there so she could earn it. She promptly changed her mind and took the money, and I was off.



And that's how I came to pay a prostitute -- money well spent. For the price of a blowjob, I was able to leave Sihanoukville and Cambodia with my passport, some knowledge, and my dignity.

mpunity is the rule for Cham Prasidh’s bodyguards

Cham Prasidh’s bodyguards accused of violence

6 bodyguards protecting Cham Prasidh, the minister of Commerce, are accused of using violence and beating up one young man until he passed out, and seriously injuring two others.
A woman from Chak Chrouk village, Samrong Krom commune, Dangkao district, Phnom Penh city, indicated on 08 October that she is accusing a group of 6 Cham Prasidh’s bodyguards of beating up her children until one of them passed out and two others were seriously injured. However, the authority did not resolve this problem for her.

Korng Sikhem, the mother of the victims, indicated that 62 families in the village witnessed the scene on the spot, and they affixed their thumbprints on a complaint sent to the police chief in Samrong Krom commune and the commune chief. However, the pair did not resolve this case for her.

Korng Sikhem said: “There were a lot of them, they were all armed, they fired shots in the air, my son collected two bullet shells. Their shots sound like thunders, my son passed out on the ground, my daughter cried, hugged her brother and yelled, then the villagers helped fetch my son. We sent [copies of the] complaint to the commune and the police station. Each one of them told me: ‘If you are an egg, don’t knock on the rock’ and that I should be scared of them because I am very poor and I am in dire need.”

On Sunday 04 October, factory workers were disputing each others near Cham Prasidh’s house which is located near Korng Sikhem’s house also. At that time, her sons and her daughter went to look at the dispute, but when they returned back home, a group of [Cham Prasidh’s] bodyguards used violence on two of her children, one is 18-year-old and the other 20-year-old. They both passed out immediately, at that time, a 30-year-old niece of Korng Sikhem went to prevent the bodyguards from beating, but they instead turned and beat her also.

Touch Phoeun, the Samrong Krom commune chief, declined to comment on this case, and he told us to question the police chief instead.

Im Kak, the Samrong Krom station police chief, declined to clarify this case also, and he replied that he is only a minor official and he does not dare talk about this case. He directed us to talk to higher level officials.

On 08 October, RFA could not reach Cham Prasidh’s bodyguards who were accused of using violence by the villagers.

The Chak Chrouk deputy-village chief, who declined to provide his name, said that, on the day of incident, he, just like the other villagers, saw Cham Prasidh’s bodyguards using violence against Korng Sikhem’s sons and niece at about 6PM on 04 October. “They (Cham Pasidh’s bodyguards) beat them, and they also fired shots. People panicked and they came out to see, it was on a Sunday and there were a lot of factory workers and a lot of people like me who came to see. The bodyguards were chasing [the victims] and they yelled: ‘Thieves, thieves!’”

Korng Sikhem said that she did not want anything, she only wants the authority to provide justice according to the law, and that the guilty party pays for the hospital expenses for her sons who were seriously injured.

Chan Soveth, an investigator for the Adhoc human rights group, indicated that the authority should send this case to the higher levels so that it can be dealt with legally. He said that the bodyguards’ action constitutes a violation of human rights and the law, and the perpetrators, regardless of their ranks, must be sentenced according to the criminal law.

comrade Hor 5 Hong has the time to sue Sam Rainsy in France ... but he stalls on genocide tribunal: Is he afraid to reveal his past?

Comrade Hor 5 Hong (Photo: AP)

Cambodian minister stalls on genocide tribunal

Friday, October 09, 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Cambodia's foreign minister says he first wants to check his schedule before deciding whether to testify at a tribunal for Khmer Rouge leaders accused of genocide. Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong is one of the six senior members of Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party summoned before the U.N.-backed court. All of them also exercised some authority during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the mid-1970s and appear reluctant to become involved with the tribunal. The tribunal is seeking justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who died in Cambodia from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition as a result of the communist Khmer Rouge's radical policies.

KRouge lawyer demands judge [Marcel Lemonde]'s disqualification in Cambodia

Marcel Lemonde

Friday, October 09, 2009
By Patrick Falby
AFP

PHNOM PENH — The lawyer for a former Khmer Rouge leader on Friday filed a demand that the French investigating judge be disqualified from Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court for alleged bias.

Michael Karnavas, attorney for ex-Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, said the motion was based on allegations that Marcel Lemonde told subordinates to favour evidence showing suspects' guilt over evidence of their innocence.

The tribunal was set up to bring to justice the leaders of the genocidal late 1970s Khmer Rouge regime.

Karnavas said Lemonde was "giving instructions to his investigators to game the process. In other words, to look primarily for evidence that supports the prosecution".

The lawyer said he submitted his complaint based on a statement made by the former head of Lemonde's intelligence and analysis team, Wayne Bastin, at an Australian police station on Thursday.

A copy of the statement obtained by AFP said Lemonde shocked subordinates in a meeting at his Phnom Penh home in August when he told them, "I would prefer that we find more inculpatory evidence than exculpatory evidence".

Under the Khmer Rouge court's regulations, investigating judges are required to be impartial while researching allegations made by prosecutors. Defence teams are not permitted to make their own investigations.

"How is it that (Lemonde) can remain in the position in light of what we know now?" Karnavas said, adding that such behaviour was "outrageous".

Speaking on Lemonde's behalf, tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen said he had no comment on the issue.

Lemonde is currently investigating the court's second case, against Ieng Sary and his wife, former minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith, as well as Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan.

Heather Ryan, who monitors the court for the Open Society Justice Initiative, told AFP that the defence would probably need to demonstrate systemic bias for Lemonde to lose his job.

"An off the cuff remark made in private -- like what was quoted -- may not be significant," Ryan said.

Under the court's internal rules, Lemonde's previous work on investigations remains valid even if he is disqualified from the tribunal.

Lemonde also met controversy earlier this week when it was revealed he summoned six top government and legislative officials to testify against Khmer Rouge leaders, a move opposed by Prime Minister Hun Sen's administration.

Final arguments in the court's first trial of prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, known by the alias Duch, are scheduled for late next month.

But the tribunal, created in 2006 after several years of haggling between Cambodia and the UN, has faced accusations of political interference and allegations that local staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.

Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge a communist utopia between 1975-79, resulting in the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork and torture.