The problem, part II

Unfortunately, there are many stories to be told about the problems of sex trafficking and sex workers in Southeast Asia.

Nick Kristof wrote a couple of articles on the work of the Somaly Mam foundation in Cambodia trying to rehabilitate girls sold into prostitution. In this article, he explains how girls forced into prostitution are electrocuted and beaten to be coerced into entertaining customers. In another heartbreaking article, he explains the problem of sex trade as modern day slavery:

"Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.

She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.

Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times."

In a seemingly unrelated article about prostitution during the Korean War, I was reminded that the sex trade in Asia/Southeast Asia exploded during the World War II/Vietnam/Korean War era due to the scores of American men on Asian soil. Before we are ever tempted to look as Westerners upon the Asian sex trade as an Asian problem, we must remember that it was the Western and American presence here that made the sex trade so profitable. Thailand's sex trade in particular is tied to the presence of troops here during the Vietnam War. There are echoes of that still today as you walk the streets of Bangkok and see old white men holding hands with young, impossibly small girls.

The problem of the sex trade here was created by people, encouraged by governments and the responsibility is on all of them, all of us to make it right.