The ongoing horror of Svay Pak

'High Street' Svay Pak

I feel sick to my stomach. I steady myself against the wall, and breathe for a moment.

“This was on the wall when we got here,” he says, motioning to a sketchy hand drawn princess. Something any little girl would've drawn.

“We left these rooms as they are to show people what it was like.” The stalls (the term 'room' is misleading) are tiny, with a simple bed, a curtain for a door, and no roof. No privacy. Nowhere to hide. No escape from the noise. No escape from what they had become.

“And upstairs, was the pink room...”

The last few days has been a learning experience.

This time, I knew of the Cambodian history.

I didn't know how it would effect me. I didn't know how it affected the present Cambodia.

Come with me to Svay Pak. Walk down the dusty street, lined with run-down (so, normal) looking shops. See the regular smiling kids walk about the place.

There's nothing to immediately discern the place from any of the other poor areas around Phnom Penh.

We walk into a modest sized hall, with colourful paintings on the walls.

It's a friendly place, kids noisily moving about the room. There's a large colour-filled 'Good Shepherd' painting on the wall.

We're led around, shown the rooms where they hold the kids club, english lessons, pre-school... It's all madly familiar to me. Just like the YWAM centre in Bacolod, Philippines that I spent time in when I was ten.

Across the street is a gym. There's some of the skinniest gym-users I've ever seen pumping iron, and chatting with their mates in their baseball caps and singlets.

“We run a kick-boxing program, and a weights and PT program too,” says Isaac.

“It's a great way to get the guys interested. Some of them have actually gone on to kick-box professionally.”

He smiles.

To come from a poverty stricken neighbourhood, to now being able to support himself and his family, and keep his sisters out of brothels... “It's a cool story, actually...”

We walk down the street to another hall. 'Rahab's House' is emblazoned across the facade.

“This is the original centre,” says Isaac.

“The building was rented by Don when they first started up in Svay Pak. It was abandoned at the time, and central to the town. It needed some work, though, because it was last used as a brothel.”

I knew this. I joked to Isaac about the dark irony of the building... and then immediately the gravity of the situation took hold of me.

Shut up, Josh, I thought. There's nothing funny here...

“When they moved in they knocked down most of the stalls, as you can see...”

I walk along the wall. I can see the ends of the brickwork, marking out the tiny stalls.

“...but we left a few of them here, so that people could see how it was. And we left this...”

The curtain is drawn back, and I see the picture on the wall.

Psychologists will tell you that abused children invent imaginary friends, or even different lives in their mind to escape from extreme abuse.

It's clear that this room was occupied by a child, but in her physical surroundings - her detainment - there are some things she couldn't escape from. She was a slave. With no rights and no future. She was there to please her captors, the wardens and any man who walked through the door.There are some things she couldn't escape from.

I feel physically sick. “Upstairs,” says Isaac, “was the pink room, where you could buy a virgin.”

Just eight years ago, this was a house of pain. Now it's a house of restoration. I'm trying to grasp hold of that, but it's seriously doing my head in.

It was around eight years ago that the initial raids in Svay Pak occurred. The obvious brothels were closed, the owners were arrested, and some of the sex-slaves were released from their effective bonds.

But the unfortunate truth of how things are in Cambodia, is that within a week nearly everyone had been released from prison.

The sex trade returned to Svay Pak, only now it had been pushed underground.

Harder to see, harder to infiltrate, and just as evil as ever.

“What we have now, is someone sitting in a cafe, waiting for a pimp to walk past and set up a deal.” says Isaac. “Now some of the major hotels in Phnom Penh will set up the deal for you, and arrange for the child to be brought to your room.”
The paedophillic sex tourism industry in Cambodia is alive and well.

The UN states that 80% of Cambodia's “Sex Workers” are between 12 and 18 years old. The reality of the situation is that the term 'workers' isn't a true description of many of the girls. Being a 'worker' suggests a choice in the matter, some sort of rights, and a basic wage.

What actually happens to many of the girls (and boys) is that they are sold into the industry by their impoverished parents, or lured across the border from Vietnam to nannying or domestic worker positions that don't exist.
Once they've been taken by a pimp or brothel, they are no longer a worker.

They're a slave, plain and simple.

They have no choice in coming and going, no choice on yes or no. They are an object for someone else to exploit.

The facts that come out of Svay Pak are staggering.

Reports of girls as young as six being sold are common. Children are bought and sold, traded across the Thai and Vietnamese border like some sort of commodity. Entire factories are run on slavery. During our tour, Isaac tells me of a woman who has been enslaved in a brick factory for twenty years in an attempt to pay off a $200 debt.

The whole situation is being taken advantage of not just by sex tourists, but by locals as well, and kept open by corrupt government officials turing a blind eye. Of course, soliciting children is illegal in Cambodia, but the arrests are few and far between. Examples of handcuffs 'slipping off' on the way to the courthouse are the rule rather than the exception.

Rahab's House has many stories of 'rescue-raids' being foiled by corrupt police.

The last time it happened, the rescue targets were two enslaved girls; one 12, one 14. The day before the raid two uniformed officers walked into the house and notified the owner of the planned action. The house was raided the next morning, and the girls were nowhere to be found. These stories are commonplace.

When I first found out about Cambodia's history, I read an article in which the author explained the extreme levels of injustice as such:

'The evil of the Khmer Rouge lives on within the people that it was inflicted upon.'

It made sense to me. In a land where all the intellectuals, policy makers, teachers, and anyone of employable intelligence/book knowledge was murdered, there was no-one left to guide those who remained. Think of the pillars of society in your own communities- Mayors, Clerics, counsellors... Anyone seen as a threat to the Khmer Rouge was eliminated. Many of the children were left without parents. A lot of those that survived moved into crime and prostitution out of not just desperation, but because there was literally no other option. The only people in Cambodia with money were soldiers.

You are now faced with the result of an entire generation that was raised without guidance.

Isaac put it quite simply: Many of the people lack a moral compass. As a result, we have parents that would sell their children, and wage-earning government officials that would accept a bribe rather than liberate a child.

But fortunately, the story doesn't stop there.

Because despite the setbacks and constant frustrations, there are people who were outraged enough to put themselves in the middle of all of this and do something about it. Little by little, things in Svay Pak are changing. It's slow, hard work, and work that needs our support.

“One of the biggest problems is that people don't know about Svay Pak,” says Isaac.

“The pedophiles know. They know it's somewhere they can come and have sex with a little kid.”

I feel physically sick. Again.

To those who know me, I ask as a personal favour to me that you share this story with your friends, work mates, team mates and families.

It's been too long that Svay Pak has been famous to the perpetrators alone.

We can change this.

Joshua Welsh

no1welsh@gmail.com

This interview was arranged by Change Your World, a group set on highlighting the issues of modern day slavey in Asia today.  www.changeyourworld.com.my

For more information on Rahab's House see http://agapewebsite.org/projects/rahabs-house/