After the Brothel
By
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

POIPET, Cambodia - When I describe sex trafficking as, at its worst, a
21st-century version of slavery, I'm sure plenty of readers roll their eyes
and assume
that's hyperbole.

It's true that many of the girls who are trafficked around the world go
voluntarily or under coercion too modest to be fairly called slavery. But
then there
are girls like Srey Rath.

A couple of years ago, at age 15 or 16 (she's unsure of her birth date),
Srey Rath decided to go work in Thailand for two months, so that she could
give
her mother a present for the Cambodian new year.

But the traffickers who were supposed to get her and four female friends
jobs as dishwashers smuggled them instead to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of
Malaysia.
There, three of the girls, including Srey Rath, were locked up in a karaoke
lounge that operated as a brothel and ordered to have sex with customers.
Srey
Rath indignantly resisted.

"So the boss got angry and hit me in the face, first with one hand and then
with the other," she remembers. "The mark stayed on my face for two weeks."

That was the beginning of a hell. The girls were forced to work in the
brothel 15 hours a day, seven days a week, and they were never paid or
allowed outside.
Nor were they allowed to insist that customers use condoms.

"They just gave us food to eat, but they didn't give us much because the
customers didn't like fat girls," Srey Rath said.

The girls had been warned that if they tried to escape they could be
murdered. But they were so desperate that late one night, after they had
been locked
up in the 10th-floor apartment where they were housed, they pried a strong
board off a rack used for drying clothes. Then they balanced the board,
which
was just five inches wide, from their window to a ledge in the next
building, a dozen feet away.

Srey Rath and four other girls inched across, 10 floors above the pavement.

"We thought that even if we died, it would be better than staying behind,"
Srey Rath said. "If we stayed, we would die as well." (I talked to another
of
the Cambodians, Srey Hay, and she confirmed the entire account.)

Once on the other side, they took the elevator down and fled to a police
station. But the police weren't interested and tried to shoo them away at
first
- and then arrested them for illegal immigration. Srey Rath spent a year in
a Malaysian prison, and when she was released, a Malaysian policeman drove
her away - and sold her to a taxi driver, who sold her to a Thai policeman,
who sold her to a Thai brothel.

Finally, after two more months, Srey Rath fled again and made it home this
time to the embraces of her joyful family. An aid group, American Assistance
for Cambodia, stepped in to help Srey Rath, outfitting her with a street
cart and an assortment of belts and keychains to sell. That cost only $400,
and
now she's thrilled to be earning money for her family.

Over the last five years, the U.S. has begun to combat sex trafficking, with
President Bush's State Department taking the lead. But there's so much more
that could be done, particularly if the White House became involved. More
scolding and shaming of countries with major sex trafficking problems, like
Cambodia
and Malaysia, would go a long way to get them to clean up their act.

It's mostly a question of priorities. No politician defends sex trafficking,
but until recently no one really opposed it much either. It just wasn't on
the agenda. If, say, 100 people in each Congressional district demanded that
their representatives push this issue, sex trafficking would end up much
higher
on our foreign policy agenda - and the resulting ripple of concern around
the globe would emancipate tens of thousands of girls.

You'll understand the stakes if you ever cross the border from Thailand to
Cambodia at Poipet: look for a cart with a load of belts. You'll see a
beaming
teenage girl who will try to sell you a souvenir, and you'll realize that
talk about sex "slavery" is not hyperbole - and that the shame lies not with
the girls but with our own failure to respond as firmly to slavery today as
our ancestors did in the 1860's.

Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company |