January 21, 2005

Interesting follow-up

In January 2003, NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about his visits to Cambodia and how he purchased two teenage girls -- sex slaves. ($150 and $203). He set them free and made sure that an NGO was looking after them. A year later, he has followed up on the story, revisiting these people. Original series here, here, here, here and here. (Please note: the NY Times uses an archaic fee-based service to view older articles such as these) Current stories here and here -- one good and unfortunately, one not so good... Good first: bq. Leaving the Brothel Behind A year ago, a pimp handed me a quivering teenage girl. Her name was Srey Neth, and she was one of the hundreds of thousands of teenagers who are enslaved by the sex trafficking industry worldwide. bq. Then I did something dreadfully unjournalistic: I bought her. Kristof then returned her to her family home and gave her $100 to set up a small store. Things were going great until: bq. At first, it turns out, everything went well for Srey Neth. Our plan was for her to start a shop in her village, near Battambang. She invested $100 I had given her to build a shack and stock it with food and clothing. For a few months, business boomed. bq. The problem was her family. Srey Neth's parents and older brothers and sisters had a hard time understanding why they should go hungry when their sister had a store full of food. And her little nephews and nieces, running around the yard, helped themselves when she wasn't looking. bq. "Srey Neth got mad," her mother recalled. "She said we had to stay away, or everything would be gone. She said she had to have money to buy new things." bq. But in a Cambodian village, nobody listens to an uneducated teenage girl. Indeed, the low status of girls is the underlying reason why so many daughters are sold to the brothels. So by May, Srey Neth's shop was empty, and she had no money to restock it. bq. "It was our fault," her father told me, looking ashamed. "It was not Srey Neth's fault." She moved to Phnom Penh and started going to Beauticians School. Plans to open her own shop. (Kristof was her first paying customer.) Other story is not that good: bq. Back to the Brothel After I purchased Srey Mom from her brothel for $203 a year ago and brought her back to her village, the joy was overwhelming. Her parents and siblings had assumed she was dead, and they shrieked and hugged and cried. bq. I had doubts about the other sex slave I had purchased, Srey Neth, whom I wrote about on Wednesday - and who in fact is thriving and is now preparing to become a hairdresser. But I was pretty sure that Srey Mom would make it. bq. So I'm devastated to say that a year later, I found Srey Mom back here in the wild town of Poipet, in her old brothel. She's devastated, too - when she spotted me, she ran away to her room in the back of the brothel until she could compose herself. bq. "I never lie to people, but I lied to you," she said forlornly. "I said I would not come back, and I did. I didn't want to return, but I did." bq. Yet, sadly, such an experience is common. Aid groups find it unnerving that they liberate teenagers from the bleak back rooms of a brothel, take them to a nice shelter - and then at night the kids sometimes climb over the walls and run back to the brothel. Key problem is drugs: bq. "Ninety-five percent of the girls take drugs," Srey Mom told me. Some girls inject morphine, but brothel owners worry that needle holes make girls look unsightly, so methamphetamine pills are most common. bq. Some brothel owners welcome addiction, because it makes the girls dependent upon them. But Srey Mom said that is not true of her brothel owner, Heok Tem, whom she calls "Mother." bq. "Mother doesn't want us to use drugs," Srey Mom said. She has an eerily close relationship with Mrs. Heok Tem, and these days that emotional bond keeps her in the brothel as much as do her debts. Mrs. Heok Tem seems to feel genuine affection for Srey Mom and truly helped in the effort to get Srey Mom to start a new life, but she also cheats Srey Mom ruthlessly - I examined the brothel's account books - and rakes in cash by pimping the girl, which exposes her to AIDS. bq. "It's wrong," Mrs. Heok Tem admitted. But for now, she says, she needs the money. Kristof mentions that 36 percent of girls in local brothels have H.I.V. He then closes with this: bq. President Bush declared in his inaugural address this week that "no one deserves to be a slave" and that advancing freedom is "the calling of our time." I can't think of a better place to start than the hundreds of thousands of girls trafficked each year, for this 21st-century version of slavery has not only grown in recent years but is also especially diabolical - it poisons its victims, like Srey Mom, so that eventually chains are often redundant. Very true. Kristof sometimes strays into the far left but on basic human rights and actually doing something about it, he is one of the good guys. A bully pulpit does not have to be a bad thing... Hat tip to Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution Posted by DaveH at January 21, 2005 11:22 PM