Svay Pak - Political Situation

Political Situation

The political situation in Svay Pak is very volatile. Brothel owners suffer from closures, crackdowns, and extortion from armed military and civil police forces operating under loose government control. In addition sex workers experience raids, arrests and rapes from the same people. The laws here are very lax with many brothels in a relationship of patronage with the local authorities. Thus child predators and brothel owners are rarely arrested and in the event that one does get charged, many get off all charges if they are able to bribe. The Hun Sen government is partly to blame for the continual growth of the child sex trade here. Pimps have been reported of holding virgin children and then releasing them to a series of bidders such as high-ranking military officers, politicians, businessmen and foreign tourists. Because of how lucrative the trade is much of this industry is controlled by senior military and police officers. It is evident that there is a higher power involved when evidence goes missing, brothels are tipped off before raids, and pimps are able to slip away from their handcuffs.

The international community has been exerting pressure on the Cambodian government to clean up its image of a haven for child pedophilia. While the government has conducted raids on Svay Pak with the most recent being in 2005, it is still generally acknowledged that the trade may still be running but under strict secrecy as opposed to its open display of children for sale a few years earlier. Even though Svay Pak currently has very little evidence in terms of its past, many experts believe that the trade has just dispersed to other parts of Cambodia. The police have admitted that the brothels they shut down in high-profile raids in the past usually reopen a few weeks later. In addition the arrests and convictions of foreigners are used to make headlines to appease international groups such as ASEAN while the majority of predators—the local people—are rarely prosecuted. Sochua Mu, a politician with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party and a former minister for women's affairs stated that, “the government wants to have showcases to make itself look good - that Cambodia is actually taking care of this problem of human trafficking, which is really not the truth.”