It is late afternoon and the tourists are drifting into Svay Pak,a squalid shantytown surrounded by rice paddies on the fringes ofthe Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. They congregate outsideramshackle cafes, swigging Angkor beer and surveying the wares: thepint-sized prostitutes spilling out of the brothels that line thepotholed main street.
There is sex for sale all over Phnom Penh: in nightclubs, poolhalls and karaoke bars, even in the cluster of hairdressing shopsnear the art deco central market. No need to make the 30-minute treknorth to Svay Pak along a congested highway, weaving through ajumble of bicycles, dogs and tractors. But Svay Pak offers somethingspecial: young girls. Girls barely older than children - and somethat are simply children.
Cambodia, once best known for the horrors of the Khmer Rougeregime, has acquired a new kind of infamy as the latest haunt ofglobetrotting paedophiles. Gary Glitter, the 1970s glam-rock star,who was jailed for four months in November 1999 for downloadingchild pornography from the internet, was deported from Phnom Penhlast month, but less prominent offenders have little to fear in anation where poverty is rife and corruption rampant. Glitter, whosereal name is Paul Gadd, served two months. He moved to Cambodia ayear ago and set up home with a young Khmer girl and her mother.After a public outcry stirred up by the British tabloids, he movedto neighbouring Vietnam, but slipped back into the country beforeChristmas.
His reappearance underscored the international dimensions of theproblem. Crackdowns in the West, with the establishment of sex-offender registers and stricter monitoring of people working withchildren, are driving abusers abroad.
Cambodia, despite being a signatory to international conventionsagainst the trafficking and exploitation of children, allows thetrade to operate quite brazenly. In Svay Pak, where hens pick in thedirt and ragamuffins play in puddles, child prostitution is athriving industry. Twenty brothels, each sealed by a padlocked irongrille, line the narrow, rutted track that runs through the village.Step into any of the brick and concrete buildings, and the papasan -pimp - will produce a girl or boy to suit every whim. Oral sex inone of the sweaty plywood cubicles costs $5 (pounds 3.20); $500 buysa six-year-old for a week.
Across the road, in a cafe set up by enterprising locals, theEnglish menu offers fish and chips and baked beans on toast. Thetourists seated around the battered Formica tables greet each otherlike kindred spirits; they range from pale-faced backpackers to menin their sixties. The air is full of American drawls and Australiantwangs - and the unmistakable sound of a Geordie accent can beheard.
Several girls in skin-tight trousers and spaghetti-strap tops aredancing around a group of Japanese men, giggling and flirting,sitting on their knees. A waif in a pyjama-like outfit whispers inthe ear of a prospective punter, suggesting 'boom-boom'(intercourse) or 'yum-yum' (oral sex). 'Very good, very nice,' shepromises, massaging his shoulders, then leans over and kisses himfirmly on the mouth.
The prostitutes look no older than 12 or 13, but there areyounger models inside the brothels, where the girls are instructedto lift up their tops and skirts to show off their childish bodiesto customers. 'That's why foreigners like Svay Pak,' says Om ChamRoeun, who makes a living from whisking tourists around Phnom Penhon the back of his motorbike. 'Very young girls, very small girls,and no one cares. Why should they? It's good money.'
A moped draws up and two Englishmen alight. They are plainlyregulars; the adolescent waiter brings their drinks without beingasked. One sports a greasy ponytail and floral shirt; the other hasa beer gut spilling over safari shorts and a sunburnt neck. Ponytailis planning to visit Angkor Wat, Cambodia's famed ancient templecomplex. Sunburnt Neck snorts with derision. 'That's just a load ofold stones,' he says. 'I'm telling you, this is the place to be.'
After draining their Cokes, the men disappear inside a dimly-litdoorway, through which candles can be glimpsed flickering in aBuddhist shrine. A few minutes later, a uniformed police officersaunters up to the metal grille and is given an envelope by theVietnamese pimp slouching outside. The bribe changes hands in broaddaylight. The policeman swaggers off.
The girls are, in effect, sex slaves; they receive no money, onlyfood, and armed guards stop them running away. Yet the tradeoperates with virtual impunity, thanks to high-level politicalprotection and the connivance of corrupt police and judges. Withmuch of the lucrative industry controlled by senior police andmilitary officers, successful prosecutions are rare. Evidence ismysteriously lost, brothels are tipped off before raids, and pimpsslip their handcuffs on the way to court.
Only three foreigners have been convicted of paedophile offencesover the years, including a British former headteacher, John Keeler,who threw a chair across court, shouting that he had been promisedan acquittal after paying the judge $3,000 (pounds 2,000). Keeler,who spent a year behind bars in Phnom Penh after being convicted inNovember 2000, was caught making pornographic videos with younggirls in a park.
However, most offenders manage to buy their way out of trouble,according to Pierre Legros, the director of AFESIP, a French charitythat rescues child prostitutes. 'It's anarchy, total anarchy,' hesays. 'If the police did their job properly, they could arrest 50paedophiles a day. As it is, a perpetrator gets to court and theevidence has been burnt. Of those that are jailed, most are releasedafter a few months.'
AFESIP and other agencies working in the field are frustrated bythe flagrant failure of law enforcement. 'Sometimes we have all theevidence, but no one will pursue the case because the brothels arerun by powerful people,' says Sun Sothy, the director of theCambodian Women's Crisis Centre. 'Or the police have someone incustody, then they get a call from high up telling them to releasehim or else.'
In one incident last year, 14 Vietnamese girls aged from 10 to 13were removed from the Svay Pak brothels after an undercoverinvestigation by AFESIP. When the matter came before a judge, heordered the girls to be arrested and deported as illegal immigrants.One of the brothel owners, meanwhile, was handcuffed and put in apolice car. By the time the car arrived at the police station, shehad vanished.
Legros claims that a senior cabinet minister is involved in thetrade. 'If I give you the name, I'm dead,' he says. It is no emptyboast. He and his wife, Somaly Mam, receive regular death threatsand their house was firebombed in 1998 by a vengeful pimp. His wifehas been followed and threatened by armed men on three occasions. Atone stage, she was forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Laos.
The AFESIP centre in Tuol Kok, a suburb of Phnom Penh, issurrounded by a high metal barrier crowned with barbed wire.Security guards patrol the entrance. Just inside, in a shadycourtyard, two young girls play on a swing under a mango tree. In adownstairs room, a dozen girls are bent industriously over sewingmachines. A literacy class is in progress next door.
The centre is a place of sanctuary for former child sex workers,who are given medical and psychological help and taught vocationalskills. AFESIP has a second base in Kompong Chang, on the MekongRiver, and has just opened a third in the tourist town of Siem Reap,near the Angkor temples. A recent survey found that 70 per cent ofchildren in Siem Reap had been approached by foreigners asking forsex, or knew someone who had been approached.
Chantala is not sure how old she is; possibly 14. She has thelook of a frightened animal and is unable to meet a stranger's gaze,staring at the floor and kicking her bare feet. A few years ago, awoman approached her aunt and offered to employ the little girl as alive-in cleaner at a shop in Phnom Penh. Her impoverished familyquickly agreed. The shop turned out to be a brothel. Her firstclient was a Chinese man. 'He wanted sex with me. I said no,' shesays in a barely audible whisper. 'He beat me until I was nearlyunconscious, then he tore my clothes off and raped me. Afterwardsthe boss of the brothel ordered me to have sex with many men. When Isaid no, I don't want to, he screamed at me and put a gun to myhead.
'I worked most days from 9am until 3am. Sometimes I was sick andthe boss cursed me and said I'd be a prostitute until I died becauseI owed him so much money. One day a man came and took me to avillage outside Phnom Penh. When we got there, there were 10 menwaiting for me. I had to have sex with all of them. I was taken tothe same place many times again.'
There are worse stories. Avy, an eight-year-old girl living inAFESIP's Kompong Chang centre, was sold into the sex trade afterbeing raped by her stepfather and nine other men. She was hit acrossthe face and given electric shocks when she refused to have sex withclients. When she grew sleepy after working long hours, the pimpthrust chillies in her eyes.
A Unicef survey concluded that 35 per cent of Cambodia's 55,000prostitutes are under 16. 'We believe the figure is even higher,'says Sao Chhoeurth, AFESIP's technical co-ordinator. 'We find thegirls are getting younger. There used to be people in their twentiesworking in the industry. Now the oldest girls are teenagers.'
The trend is fuelled by a growing demand for virgins, who -according to a widely-held belief in Cambodia - bring good luck andlong life to the men who deflower them as well as eliminating thedanger of HIV infection. Sex workers are not allowed to insist thatclients use condoms. Not surprisingly, up to half of them arebelieved to be HIV-positive. Some of the younger girls are stitchedup in hospital and sold on to other brothels so they can once againbe presented as virgins.
Many of the girls working in Svay Pak and other centres of childprostitution are trafficked from rural villages. Some of them - likeChantala - are lured by false promises of jobs. Most are illiterate,and easy prey for the networks of recruiters set up in ruralcommunities. Others are sold to brothels by parents so poor thatthey are willing to sacrifice an older girl in order to feed therest of their children.
Cambodia is the hub of a people-trafficking racket with tentaclesstretching across South-east Asia and links with several Asianmafias. Many of the country's underage prostitutes are from Vietnam,while Cambodia supplies girls to countries in the region as well asto Japan and Europe.
Poverty, corruption and lack of education have created theperfect environment for the trade to flourish. Some believe thatCambodia's turbulent past is another factor; 30 years of civil warhave left a fractured nation with a weak institutionalinfrastructure and confused notions of right and wrong. 'We are abrutalised, damaged society,' says Sun Sothy. 'Why else do we treatour children like this?'
The industry is not fed by tourists alone. Visiting brothels isan acceptable practice in a country where women are expected to bevirgins when they get married. Sex with young girls is regarded as aperk of power and privilege; those girls, of course, will never getmarried. 'A virgin is very stimulating, you know?' explains Brasil,an agriculture student in the southern town of Kampot. 'But after agirl loses her virginity, she's finished, no one will love her. Aboy, on the other hand, is always 100 per cent golden.'
This is the muddled morality that Western paedophiles areexploiting with glee. Svay Pak, once just an anonymous village, isnow extolled in the darker recesses of the internet. Websites set upby regulars give directions, as well as offering stomach-churningreviews of children in the various brothels. Svay Pak's pimps evendeliver to central hotels. One Italian man had 11 girls dropped offat his room in three batches.
Cambodia is a relatively new travel destination, only deemed safesince Pol Pot died in 1998, prompting the remaining Khmer Rougeguerrillas to lay down their arms. The tourism industry has grownrapidly since then, with 400,000 people - including 18,000 Britons -visiting last year. The child sex trade, once tiny, is now booming.The Tourism Ministry estimates that one-quarter of visitors are sextourists. 'More and more foreigners are coming for this reason,'says Somaly Mam, adding bitterly: 'Cute temples, cute children.'
Ecpat, an international network that campaigns against childprostitution, says that Cambodia's sex tourists are seasonedtravellers. 'They've been to Thailand, they've been to thePhilippines and they're looking for new frontiers,' says BernadetteMcMenamin, the director of Ecpat's Australian branch. 'These are menwho see children as a commodity. To them, they're fresh meat.'
Mary Robinson, the former United Nations High Commissioner forHuman Rights, criticised the exploitation of children when she wentto Cambodia last year. Lord Puttnam, who produced the 1984 filmabout the civil war, The Killing Fields, also highlighted theproblem while visiting the country this month in his new role as thepresident of Unicef UK. Western aid workers, however, say there isno political will to crack down. 'It's clear that the Cambodiangovernment doesn't care about its own citizens,' says Legros.
The onus is on Western countries to prosecute perpetrators forsex offences committed abroad. However, only one Briton, 53-year-old Mark Towner, has been convicted since the relevant legislationwas passed in 1997. In June 2001, Towner was jailed for eight yearsby Maidstone Crown Court for abusing children in Cambodia. McMenamincalls Britain's record 'pathetic'. No doubt Chantala, Avy andthousands of other girls, if they knew the situation, would agree.
