{"id":768,"date":"2009-01-02T13:32:23","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T11:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/?p=768"},"modified":"2014-02-21T15:08:36","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T13:08:36","slug":"the-evil-behind-the-smiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/?p=768","title":{"rendered":"The Evil Behind The Smiles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/div>\n
Published: December 31, 2008<\/div>\n
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Nicholas D. Kristof\/The New York Times<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On the Ground<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Western men who visit red-light districts in poor countries often find themselves surrounded by coquettish teenage girls laughingly tugging them toward the brothels. The men assume that the girls are there voluntarily, and in some cases they are right.<\/p>\n

But anyone inclined to take the girls\u2019 smiles at face value should talk to Sina Vann, who was once one of those smiling girls.<\/p>\n

Sina is Vietnamese but was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia, where she was drugged. She said she woke up naked and bloody on a bed with a white man \u2014 she doesn\u2019t know his nationality \u2014 who had purchased her virginity.<\/p>\n

After that, she was locked on the upper floors of a nice hotel and offered to Western men and wealthy Cambodians. She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first phrase in Khmer,\u201d the Cambodian language, \u201cwas, \u2018I want to sleep with you,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cMy first phrase in English was\u201d \u2014 well, it\u2019s unprintable.<\/p>\n

Sina mostly followed instructions and smiled alluringly at men because she would have been beaten if men didn\u2019t choose her. But sometimes she was in such pain that she resisted, and then she said she would be dragged down to a torture chamber in the basement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the brothels have these torture chambers,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are underground because then the girls\u2019 screams are muffled.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in many brothels, the torture of choice was electric shocks. Sina would be tied down, doused in water and then prodded with wires running from the 220-volt wall outlet. The jolt causes intense pain, sometimes evacuation of the bladder and bowel \u2014 and even unconsciousness.<\/p>\n

Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.<\/p>\n

After the beatings and shocks, Sina said she would be locked naked in a wooden coffin full of biting ants. The coffin was dark, suffocating and so tight that she could not move her hands up to her face to brush off the ants. Her tears washed the ants out of her eyes.<\/p>\n

She was locked in the coffin for a day or two at a time, and she said this happened many, many times.<\/p>\n

Finally, Sina was freed in a police raid, and found herself blinded by the first daylight she had seen in years. The raid was organized by Somaly Mam, a Cambodian woman who herself had been sold into the brothels but managed to escape, educate herself and now heads a foundation fighting forced prostitution.<\/p>\n

After being freed, Sina began studying and eventually became one of Somaly\u2019s trusted lieutenants. They now work together, in defiance of death threats from brothel owners, to free other girls. To get at Somaly, the brothel owners kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter. And six months ago, the daughter of another anti-trafficking activist (my interpreter when I interviewed Sina) went missing.<\/p>\n

I had heard about torture chambers under the brothels but had never seen one, so a few days ago Sina took me to the red-light district here where she once was imprisoned. A brothel had been torn down, revealing a warren of dungeons underneath.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in a room just like those,\u201d she said, pointing. \u201cThere must be many girls who died in those rooms.\u201d She grew distressed and added: \u201cI\u2019m cold and afraid. Tonight I won\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPhotograph quickly,\u201d she added, and pointed to brothels lining the street. \u201cIt\u2019s not safe to stay here long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sina and Somaly sustain themselves with a wicked sense of humor. They tease each other mercilessly, with Sina, who is single, mock-scolding Somaly: \u201cAt least I had plenty of men until you had to come along and rescue me!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sex trafficking is truly the 21st century\u2019s version of slavery. One of the differences from 19th-century slavery is that many of these modern slaves will die of AIDS by their late 20s.<\/p>\n

Whenever I report on sex trafficking, I come away less depressed by the atrocities than inspired by the courage of modern abolitionists like Somaly and Sina. They are risking their lives to help others still locked up in the brothels, and they have the credibility and experience to lead this fight. In my next column, I\u2019ll introduce a girl that Sina is now helping to recover from mind-boggling torture in a brothel \u2014 and Sina\u2019s own story gives hope to the girl in a way that an army of psychologists couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will recognize slavery as unfinished business on the foreign policy agenda. The abolitionist cause simply hasn\u2019t been completed as long as 14-year-old girls are being jolted with electric shocks \u2014 right now, as you read this \u2014 to make them smile before oblivious tourists.<\/p>\n

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Published: December 31, 2008 PHNOM PENH, Cambodia\u00a0 Nicholas D. Kristof\/The New York Times On the Ground Western men who visit red-light districts in poor countries often find themselves surrounded by coquettish teenage girls laughingly tugging them toward the brothels. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,9,41,17,31,25,84],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bodily-autonomy","category-critica-sociala","category-english","category-media","category-menmale-allies","category-sexwork","category-trafic","tag-human-trafficking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2664,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions\/2664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fia.pimienta.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}