Speaking of being fortunate…
Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote an article about slavery in the world today. He illustrated the idea that slavery is still widespread these days with the story of a young Cambodian girl who was kidnapped in an attempt to sell her into a prostitution ring.
I keep an eye open for news on Cambodia since my trip there last January. The country had a big impact on me and stories of human rights abuses and rising rates of forced prostitution really breaks my heart.
Here is the article, reprinted here because there is no access to it on the nytimes website: An excerpt:
A Cambodian Girl’s Tragedy – Being Young and Pretty
By Nicholas D. Kristof
Pailin, Cambodia – Slavery seems like a remote part of history, until you see scholarly estimates that the slave trade in the 21st century — forced work in prostitution and some kinds of manual labor — is probably larger than it was in the 18th or 19th centuries.Or until you take a rutted dirt path in northwestern Cambodia to a hut between a rice paddy and a river, and meet a teenage girl named Noy Han. The girl, nicknamed Kahan, suffered the calamitous misfortune of being pretty.
Kahan’s village is isolated, accessible most of the year only by boat. There is no school, so she never attended a day of class…
Read more at the NY Times
***
During our journey out of Cambodia we passed through Pailin, mentioned in the story. We stopped there so our driver and the DH could have a bite to eat. I remember the town being dusty and dirty. It was full of motorcycles. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. My clearest memory is of a young Muslim girl (wearing a headscarf) driving her younger brother and sister on a small motorcycle.
Thirty minutes later we were across the border into Thailand, a beautiful country with its own ugly sex trade secrets.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I used to work for a non-profit NGO in DC during university. We did a lot of work for the Burmese women (specifically the Karen) being trafficked into Thailand for the sex trade. Sadly, many of them are actually sold by their family as a way to make money in such a repressive regime. The same thing is going on all over south east asia (and I’m sure elsewhere as well). It is horrifying what happens to them and how the western world allows it to continue. Most of the prostitutes in Thailand are modern slaves. And who do you think is paying for that?
That is so sad. And to think we are waging a ridiculous war right now for who knows what reason meanwhile there is genocide and things like this happening in the world.