Is this your idea of a good time?

[foolwholaughsatdeath]

Saw the following at www.sfgate.com today.. I had no idea that this sort of thing was still going on

Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- Sipping a beer in an Irish pub, Doc looks every bit the privileged young man that he is. Neatly dressed in a buttoned-down shirt and khaki pants, he is polite and quick with a smile, especially when talking about his favorite pastime - gang rape.

Asked how many times he has gang raped a prostitute, the 23-year-old pauses, looks at the ceiling, and grins while venturing a guess: "I don't know.

Maybe 100 times."

Whether the number is true or not, Doc is among an alarming number of young Cambodian men in the habit of gang-raping prostitutes, a practice called bauk, which means "plus" in Khmer.

Bauk has been practiced for years, but has become more popular after the government closed down some of the city's most notorious brothels, driving the trade underground. It is especially popular among university students in Cambodia's larger towns, according to Gender and Development for Cambodia (GAD), a nongovernmental organization.

Most participants are from affluent families and are members of youth gangs. Doc, for example, claims family connections in the police department and the National Assembly. These young men are the future leaders of Cambodia.

Bauk is "more common among people with money," said Luke Bearup, author of the recent GAD report. "It's the guys who are connected, who feel invulnerable. It's the rising middle class and upper class who are most involved."

A night out for these young men frequently involves one or two men picking up a prostitute at a park or a brothel and taking her to a guesthouse just outside the city. Once there, the young woman will find up to a dozen more men waiting to have sex with her as a group. She will face a grim choice, if it can be called a choice at all -- submit to their desires or almost surely suffer a beating and a gang rape anyway.

It's a story told by gang members, prostitutes and NGO workers. For the gang members it's about "fun" and camaraderie. For Cambodia's estimated 70,000 sex workers it's about fear and powerlessness. Aid workers say it's also about attitudes toward male and female sexuality, about the well-connected abusing the powerless, and about the culture of violence that has taken root in Cambodia. Some suggest it is an indirect legacy of the Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal atrocities have numbed people and made it difficult for them to empathize with victims of violence.

The most common victims of gang rape are prostitutes who work at places such as Chea Sim Park, a worn strip of turf about the length of three football fields. At any given hour of the night, dozens of sex workers are huddled in small groups along the park's perimeter. All of them stand a "very high chance" of being gang raped," Bearup said.

Sraybo, 22, who works at Chea Sim Park, guesses that maybe 100 women there have been gang-raped in parks throughout the city. But Sraybo says she has never been forced to endure bauk. "Many gang members come here to find girls. I've just been lucky," she said.

Da, a 21-year-old brothel worker, has not been so lucky. She said she has been gang-raped three times. The men have never beaten her, she said, but they threatened her with violence each time. "If I don't have sex with all of them they will beat me up," she said.

There is little the women can do. Neither pimps nor police offer protection with the latter unlikely to arrest a university student.

"Justice is connected to who you are connected to," Bearup explained. "You can't rely on the police and judicial system."

In fact, prostitutes can rely on few people in Cambodia, where they occupy the absolute lowest rung on the societal ladder. There is "a general acceptance that these women, because of their status as prostitutes or their sexual availability, were less than fully human," said the GAD report. "More than speaking freely, gang members openly spoke of bauk as though it was a kind of sport."

A survey of young people who were not gang members also showed a stunning lack of empathy for victims of bauk. Only 13 percent of young men and 13 percent of young women identified bauk as rape. About 12 percent of men and 16 percent of women said that while bauk is wrong, it was better that prostitutes endure it than other women.

Yet the same values that make prostitutes so despised also make them necessary: the value traditional Khmer culture places on a young woman's virginity. So-called "good" girls are expected to remain virgins until marriage. Those who don't are bad. There is little gray area. Although Khmer culture demands female virginity, it links masculinity to sexual activity. As a result, prostitutes are the object of most young men's sexual encounters throughout their youth and early adulthood.

To be sure, sexual practices are slowly changing due to the spread of HIV/AIDS, and more "good" girls are engaging in premarital sex. But attitudes toward women and their sexuality have lagged behind these changing practices, and the line between "good" and "bad" girls has become blurred. Some gang members have abducted young women who were not prostitutes and gang-raped them,

the GAD report said. One told researchers he had invited his friends to gang- rape three women with whom he had already had consensual sex several times.

In any case, for gangsters bauk is less about sex than it is a night out with the guys. Most see it as a bonding activity more than a sexual encounter. "We like to do it together. It's our favorite thing to do," said Kchey, 23, who added that for sexual gratification he prefers to visit prostitutes alone. To the extent that bauk is about sex, it is seen as an economical way to obtain it for those who might not be able to afford to purchase the services of a prostitute themselves.

Bearup and other social workers ponder a link between the horrors of the Khmer Rouge and a change in the Cambodian psyche. Even those who may not have lived through the worst period of the country's modern history certainly see it reflected in their parents and their attitudes toward violence.

"Underneath, you do have the potential for callousness when you have seen the sorts of things so many people here have seen," Bearup said.

[D80]

So disgusting!

I've read quite a few stories in Thai webboard about some Thai men gang-raping women as well.  This is called 'Loang Kaek' in Thai - the original meaning was a group of workers coming together to help each other performa certain task, usually argricultural, as a favour for someone.  They usually try to argue that the woman know anyway that by going with them (a group of men), they will have sex with her.  And if she said no, then she is only acting.  

Basically, the culture still opens the women to blame even though she is a victim.  The concept of 'raak nuan sanguan toi' can backfire pretty heavily.  This is a concept that applies to women only in Thai culture.  It literally means that women must 'love and protect themselves/their body' ie staying a virgin till married.  Sometimes this includes being 'careful' with the opposite sex (ie not going places-esp private places-with a man/men without chaperone etc etc).  When these bastards rape a woman, they argue that the woman herself is not 'raak nuan sanguan toi' in the first place for going with them and therefore deserves what she gets.

I don't know about the prostitutes but I would suspect things like that happen as well.  

Most people in Thai society would regard these bastards who go aroud gang raping women (or even just raping anyone in general) with disgust.  However, there are still some ignorant pigs who will also put blame on the women as well.  I know for a fact that this sentiment exist in the West as well but it's still not half as much as it is in Thailand.

Anyway, thes sort of things really make me feel angry.  It's even worse when the 'victim' in this whole thing can also be 'condemned' by the rest of the society after all they've been through.

[meemiathai]

This is a sad and disgusting world!

Even more so when the luckier people fail to sympathise with the unlucky ones!

A survey of young people who were not gang members also showed a stunning lack of empathy for victims of bauk. Only 13 percent of young men and 13 percent of young women identified bauk as rape. About 12 percent of men and 16 percent of women said that while bauk is wrong, it was better that prostitutes endure it than other women.

What kind of a world am I living in?

[Cha Minnow]

I am officially totally sickened by this article. The idea that these things happen on a daily basis makes me completely sick to my stomach. Is there *ANYTHING* that can be done? I hope these barbarian-rapists catch more than a cold next time.

[TizMe]

I hope these barbarian-rapists catch more than a cold next time.

Problem is that anything that they do catch will then be passed on to subsequent victims.

[Mackerel]

I remember watching a program in the UK, years ago, very similar story to this. The victims were young black women mainly, raped by black gang members. The program showed interviews with guys that made comments like, 'It's better if they say no' and 'We like them to struggle, it's more fun'. Interestingly, the gang-rapists used condoms most of the time. Some said it was to protect themselves, some used them to avoid leaving evidence.

Sickening.

[GlenTuk]

Yep, Tok Long ! there are some nasty pieces of sh*t in this world,Whether your a prostitute or a politician it doesn't matter ! Rape is Rape ! sickening times.

   

[tutsiwarrior]

where I live in a small town small ways up country there is a woman that suffered loang kaek with 8 men in a local park...discovered by a neighbor at 5 am crawling naked near the road.

The cops talked her into accepting 10000 baht from each of the perpetrators and let them go.

LOS?...shit, more like SE ASIA.

[samsara]

Sickening stuff!!

This is what really pisses me off. If ever I do come off as being controversial or argumentative altogether, its because of this shit. To think that women, who have no other means of survivial when it comes down to it, have to endure this kind of inhumane treatment makes me want to, i dunno what.

and yet theres nothing one can do. SEA culture promotes this kind of thing. Well maybe it doesnt necessarily promote, but it sure doesnt do much to prevent it.

Now Ive gotta go work and Im totally psychologically ######ed. Great.

[samsara]

Oh, and by the way, this kinda shit isnt new guys. Its been around since the dawn of time--its animalistic, true, but its human nature. we are animals, dont forget. just some of us act more like them than others.