Inside a tragic market

[geovalin]

Abigail Haworth

Vannith Uy* is the owner of what translates from Khmer as a “mobile nail salon”, although describing it as a salon is a stretch. It’s a bicycle with a crate on the back filled with lotions and nail polishes. Uy, 42, rides it around her Phnom Penh neighbourhood – a tangle of alleys near the river where the residents’ domestic lives spill out of their open front doors – until a customer flags her down. She performs a manicure or pedicure on the spot, sitting on a stool by the side of the street.

Three years ago, when she arrived from the countryside, Uy had a different plan. She wanted to open a hair and beauty salon on proper premises in the Cambodian capital. “But my family could find only dirty jobs,” she says. “I wanted a place where my daughter and I could work together.” So Uy did something she describes as her “only choice”: she sold her 18-year-old daughter Chamnan’s virginity to a wealthy local for $1,500.

The man was a police general who frequented the beer garden where Uy worked as kitchen help, she says. He bought Chamnan for six days and nights. He installed her in a hotel room on Phnom Penh’s outskirts and visited her many times to have sex. She was allowed to call her mother once a day. By the third day, Uy recalls, Chamnan was so weak and distressed that the man summoned a doctor to give her painkillers and a vitamin shot “so she had the strength to keep going until the end of the week”.

Uy received cash payment in full, but her planned salon never materialised. The money that had represented a life-changing sum – equivalent to about five years’ salary in her home village in Kandal – soon trickled away. After she’d paid her sick husband’s medical bills, given cash to her ageing parents and bought Chamnan a gold necklace to “raise her spirits”, there wasn’t much left. Uy had underestimated the task of clawing her way out of hardship; her stricken expression as she talks suggests she also miscalculated the personal costs of selling her daughter’s body to try.

Often overlooked for more dramatic tales of enslavement in brothels, the trade in virgins is one of the most endemic forms of sexual exploitation in Cambodia. It is a market sustained by severe poverty and ingrained gender inequality. Its clients are influential Cambodians and other members of Asia’s elite who enjoy impunity from a corrupt justice system. Most misunderstood, many of those involved in the transactions are not hardcore criminals.

They are mothers, fathers, friends and neighbours.

In Cambodia, the demand for virgins is big business that thrives due to cultural myth and other factors.

“Many Asian men, especially those over 50, believe sex with virgins gives them magical powers to stay young and ward off illness,” says Pung Chhiv Kek, president of rights group Licadho. “There’s a steady supply of destitute families for the trade to prey on here, and the rule of law is very weak.”

The belief that sex with virgins increases male vigour has long held sway among powerful men in Asia, including China’s Chairman Mao Zedong.

“Unlike sex-tourist pedophiles who seek out children under 10 years old, local men don’t care so much about a virgin’s age – only her beauty and the fact she’s pure,” Kek says. Parents who sell their daughters’ virginity have little concept of child rights. “They regard their offspring as their property.”

Based on Licadho’s work inside communities, Kek estimates that “many thousands” of virgins aged between 13 and 18 are sold every year. As well as rich Cambodians, men from countries such as China, Singapore and Thailand are regular buyers, too.

“They travel here on business and have everything prearranged by brokers: a five-star hotel, a few rounds of golf and a night or two with a virgin,” says Eric Meldrum, who works as an anti-exploitation consultant in Phnom Penh.

The lack of hard figures is partly due to the trade’s secrecy, Meldrum adds. Brokers operate underground, changing tactics and locations often. Plus the fact that close relatives are often involved means it rarely fits into strict definitions of sex trafficking, so it doesn’t show up in those statistics either.

But there’s another reason the trade is virtually invisible. Says Kek: “In terms of activism, few organisations highlight virgin buying, even though it’s a devastating abuse of young women.” It’s seen as difficult to generate sympathy among foreign donors, she explains, so many NGOs sidestep the issue. “The fear is that, while people might feel sorry for the girls, they’d be too outraged about parents selling their daughters to open their wallets.”

That moral complexities are sometimes ignored by those purporting to help was underscored in late May. Somaly Mam, a self-styled former sex slave and Cambodia’s most famous anti-trafficking campaigner, was forced to resign in disgrace from the US-based foundation that bears her name. On the back of heartbreaking stories, Mam was feted by the media and raised millions of dollars at New York galas. Her downfall came after an investigation revealed significant parts of her stories were untrue.

The awful irony of Mam’s fall is that she didn’t need to lie. Sex trafficking and exploitation exist in Cambodia, just often in less made-for-TV ways than her tragic tales suggested.

“People respond to emotional stories, and they hand over their money without understanding underlying causes or long-term solutions,” says Sebastien Marot, director of NGO Friends International. But in the case of the virgin trade, he says, progress is hard.

At Vannith Uy’s home, a dark, room she rents for $17 a week, she tells me about her struggle to find work when she first arrived in Phnom Penh. Her husband was injured and she had two children to support.

“The only work I could find was as a kitchen help in a beer garden. I found Chamnan a job serving ice at the same place.”

Uy hated the atmosphere, which she says became more predatory as the night wore on. “Chamnan is pretty, and all the men loved her. They made comments about her body.”

While prostitution isn’t openly advertised, many of the hostesses and beer girls supplement their income by selling sex to customers after-hours. Brokers also frequent the gardens, touting for men who want to
buy virgins or who have other “special requests”.

Uy says the thought of selling Chamnan’s virginity hadn’t occurred to her until the opportunity arose. “A tall customer in his 50s noticed Chamnan . . . One evening, he asked me if she was a virgin, and said he wanted to buy her.”

She found out before the sale took place that he was an off-duty police general. Uy eventually agreed because she saw it as a chance to save Chamnan from becoming drawn into regular sex work. “It was only a matter of time. All the girls who worked there seemed to do it eventually.”

Economic opportunities are especially dire for women, who earn an average of only 27 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to the Asian Development Bank. Working in a beer garden or karaoke bar and doing sex work on the side can bring in double the minimum garment wage of $100 per month.

But sex work is not only criminalised under the law, leaving those who do it by choice (or lack of it) vulnerable to official abuse, it also brings deep social shame thanks to enshrined expectations of female chastity.

A group of hostesses wait at the entrance of a beer garden for potential customers in Phnom Penh last year. It is not uncommon for hostesses to engage in sexual acts for money. Will Baxter

That standard is another reason virginity is so valued, of course. Men typically pay between $1,000 and $5,100 to buy a virgin for up to a week. Uy didn’t know the going rates, but she believed the offer of $1,500 for Chamnan would be enough to change their fate. “I explained my idea to Chamnan. She wasn’t happy about going with the man, but she told me she understood.”

In fact, cultural norms also dictate that women must obey and help their parents, a rule that is almost universally followed. It would have been difficult for Chamnan to refuse.

“When she came home afterwards, I knew she was sad, but we didn’t speak about it. We both felt it was better to forget it ever happened.”

Uy took a better-not-to-know approach with her husband, too. To preserve Chamnan’s virtue in his eyes, she told him she had saved up the money from tips.

Cambodian parents love their children as much as anyone, says Nget Thy, Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights director. But it’s hard to overstate how many problems exist in some communities. “Any misfortune, from losing a family member to losing a game of cards, can push people below the level they need to eat,” he says. “Attitudes that children exist for their parents’ benefit, and women exist for men’s benefit, are very, very wrong . . . But it’s the men who buy virgins who are the criminals.”

At a riverside slum I meet Dara Keo*. Dara’s mother, Rotana*, sold her virginity when she was just 12 years old, after her father died leaving gambling debts. The slum’s shacks are home to about 1,000 people, many of whom recycle rubbish as their only source of income. Dara, now 18, says almost every teenage girl there is sold for her virginity, usually in deals made with their parents by female neighbours who work as brokers. “Everyone knows it happens, but nobody talks about it openly.”

Dara’s account, and those of other young women I speak to in the slum, reveal the trade’s dehumanising efficiency.

“After my mother sold me for $500, the broker took me to a doctor to have my virginity checked and a blood test for HIV,” Dara says. “There were other girls there. We were made to take off our clothes and stand in a line until it was our turn to be examined.” (Buyers insist on proof of virginity to make sure they are not being tricked.)

Then she was taken to meet her buyer in a hotel room. The man, who was wearing “a dark suit and a gold watch”, didn’t speak or look at her at all, Dara says. “He pinned me down on the bed, unzipped his trousers and forced himself into me. The pain was very great.”

Over the next week, he came to the hotel to have sex with her two or three times a day. He didn’t use a condom. “A few times he asked if he was hurting me. When I told him yes, he used even more force.”

I ask about the man’s identity. Dara gives me the name of a Cambodian politician who is still in office. It’s impossible for her to reveal his name publicly. By the time she was allowed to return home, her vagina was torn and bruised. Her mother took her to a doctor, who gave her painkillers and said her injuries would “heal on their own”.

A senior police officer who agreed to speak anonymously says prominent men like politicians do not fear being caught because they know the police won’t act.

“If you try to enforce the law with these men, you will have a big problem,” he says, dressed in civilian clothes in a coffee shop. “I have been threatened, and some of my colleagues working on this issue have had their jobs threatened.”

He relates how he has been warned by “people high up” not to pursue cases of virgin buying (and also rape) because “having sex is human nature” and such issues were “not serious”.

He mentions a case last year of a senior military officer diagnosed with cancer and given a year to live. His wife allowed him use more than $1.7 million of their family money to “enjoy himself” before he died. “We knew he was buying a new virgin every week, but there was nothing we could do,” says the policeman. (The man died recently).

Men in power or big business “who have a good relationship with each other” are the only people who can afford to buy virgins, he adds, so arresting perpetrators is blocked by corruption at the very top. Although all forms of buying and selling sex are illegal in Cambodia, not one Khmer man has ever been convicted of purchasing virgins.

During her year working at the beer garden, Uy saw firsthand how the country’s male elite bought virgins with entitled ease. She saw more than 50 young women being purchased, “like they were delicious food”. As well as the police general who bought Chamnan, she came to know an ageing politician from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

She mentions the politician’s name. (It is not the same politician who bought Dara.) Uy said the man went further than purchasing virgins for his immediate pleasure – he “reserved” girls for the future. “He asked mothers to bring their underage daughters to the beer garden after-hours,” she explains. “Then he chose the ones he liked, and gave their mothers some money every week to buy rice until the girls grew up.”

Mu Sochua, opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker-elect, said increased education about women’s rights is needed to change attitudes.

“We need to win public support for an effective rule of law that punishes those who buy sex, not those who sell it.”

But how likely is such a change? Take the politician who gave big tips that Uy mentioned. It’s such an open secret that he is a prolific buyer of virgins that a Cambodian journalist who knows him well offered to introduce me to him. He was sure the politician would talk if I agreed to quote him anonymously.

The journalist quickly decided not to get involved. Even so, the moment suggested the lack of shame surrounding the practice and how much men like the politician must take their impunity for granted. The observer

*To protect the safety of women cited in the article, some names have been changed.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/inside-tragic-market