As Cambodia struggles to recover from three decades of genocide and war, a vicious combination of poverty, corruption and global tourism has produced a new threat -- sexual exploitation of children. ''The sexual exploitation of children is a very serious problem in Cambodia, and its perpetrated by both Cambodians and foreigners,'' Chanthol Ung, Executive Director of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center told mediapersons. ''But we're noticing a trend of more and more foreigners coming here to sexually exploit children,'' said Chanthol. Cambodia is enjoying its longest period of peace and stability in 30 years following the surrender of the last of insurgent Khmer Rouge Forces in late 1998. As a result, its tourism industry is booming.

But among the 400,000 tourists expected to arrive in Cambodia in 2000, nearly twice the previous year, are what child protection workers say an increasing number of foreign child sex predators. At risk are girls as young as 10 years old brought in from the Cambodian countryside or smuggled across the Vietnamese border to service a seemingly insatiable child sex industry centered in Phnom Penh.

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Ignorance and a desire to escape the grinding rural poverty in which 40 percent of Cambodians subsist on less than 1 dollars a day helps feed the trade. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in southeast Asia. ''Children are often forced into prostitution by their parents or kidnapped or tricked into the trade by pimps,'' said Chanthol Ung adding that Vietnamese girls are brought in Combodia under similar circumstances.

“Pornographic web sites and magazines that advertise child sex in Cambodia as cheap and easy ensures a constant stream of customers for child prostitutes,” said Yim Po, Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children's Rights. Koey, a 15-year-old from northern Battambang province, and 15-year-old Lan from Vietnam are acutely aware of the devastating toll Cambodia's child sex industry takes on its victims.

The two girls were rescued on July 7 from a secret Phnom Penh brothel that police say specialised in supplying female virgins and child prostitutes to foreign clients. Police sources suspect the existence of numerous other similar operations. Hopes of the girls that they might some day recover from the physical and psychological trauma of their ordeal were dashed when blood tests revealed they were both HIV positive.

``The child sex trade spills over from Thailand...Cambodia is becoming a favourite destination for both sex tourists and paedophiles,`` explained Sebastien Marot, Coordinator of an organisation that assists Phnom Penh`s estimated 10,000 street children. ``Cambodia is one of the hunting grounds of European, Asian and Australian paedophiles and every kind of exploitation is going on,`` he said.

A 1999 UNICEF study estimated one-third of Cambodia`s prostitutes were under the age of eighteen. Yim Po estimates that in Phnom Penh alone there are more than 1,000 child prostitutes `fifteen years old and younger`. Cambodian police and courts, hobbled by inadequate funding that makes corruption a matter of survival, are often unable or unwilling to take effective action against foreigners accused of child sex offences.
``There`s a lack of serious law enforcement against sex crimes committed by foreigners,`` said Chanthol Ung, adding there have been at least 30 child sex cases involving foreigners since 1997 that never went to trial. ``Police in Cambodia make monthly salaries of between $ 10 – 20, so it`s not difficult for foreign suspects to bribe their way out of custody.``

``As far as I know, most foreigners who have sex with young Cambodians are not tried. They just stay in jail for a while before being deported,`` said Yim Po, adding that accurate records have not been kept of the number of foreigners convicted for child sex crimes. Marot concedes that he and other concerned organisations and government ministries are fighting an uphill battle against foreign sexual exploitation of Cambodian children, but insists that there`s room for optimism.
``It`s important to remember that Cambodian police do make arrest of foreigners for child sex offences, that these offenders are photographed and named in the media and are incarcerated for periods of time,`` he said. ``The message that needs to get out is that it`s not quite as easy to sexually exploit children here as people might think.``

Cambodia says it plans to expel foreigners suspected of sex offences, regardless of whether they are found guilty of any crime.

A blacklist of all foreign sex-crime suspects would be drawn up and those on the list would be denied a new visa when their current one expired, the Cambodia daily reported on Tuesday. ``When they finish their visa they will have to leave our country and not be able to return,`` Minister of Women`s Affairs Mu Sochua told the newspaper.

The blacklist will be distributed to Cambodian Embassies overseas and at all border-crossing points, she said, adding that Cambodian courts were not properly dealing with foreign sex offenders.
The newspaper quoted an unnamed human rights worker as saying the planned blacklist was a `travesty` because targeting people who are simply suspected of committing a crime is an abuse of human rights.
Bureau Report