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(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
Loading ...World Vision Offers Tools to Expedite Prosecution of Sex Offenders
by Chamnap Nay–World Vision Communications Coordinator in Cambodia
Sexual exploitation of Cambodian children continues to be a major problem for authorities pursuing legal action against the perpetrators.
This resounding message was heard at a recent conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, sponsored by World Vision’s Child Sex Tourism Prevention Project.
Some 100 conference attendees from government ministries, law enforcement agencies, embassies the private sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), were presented with tools and methods to help them safely and effectively expedite the investigation and prosecution of sex offenders. Practical ways to support children in the legal system, serving as witnesses against their abusers, were also learned.
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(11 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5) Loading ...My wife and I will be making another trip to Cambodia at the end of the month. Lately, we have been making a habit of shuttling back and forth between Cambodia and the U.S. every few months or so. This will be our seventh trip. Cambodia is just like a second home to us now. We hope to eventually settle there someday so we would not have to travel back and forth so often.
I made my first trip to Cambodia in 1999, after having been away for 20 years. My family fled Cambodia into Thailand shortly after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. We stayed in various refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines before finally arriving in Rhode Island in 1981.
On my first trip back to Cambodia I really did not know what to expect. Since I left at the age of just nine years old, my memory of Srok Khmer was at best limited to bits and pieces of events that took place in the Killing Fields. I could recall being hungry and having to work all the time, but I could remember very few details about our whereabouts or what was happening around us, certainly not enough to write a book about.
Arriving in Cambodia I immediately sensed a strange and overwhelming connection with the land and the people. It was a profound and irreversible bond which would draw me back to my native country time and time again. Ironically, I felt very much at home in a country that in many ways had become alien to me.
To this day I often regret not having returned to Cambodia sooner. To be sure, I had been very much tied up with school and work to travel abroad. Another reason, I confess, was that I somehow grew distant from my native homeland while trying to find a place in mainstream America. I certainly did not expect to find in Cambodia in a few days what had remained elusive in America for the previous 20 years– a sense of belonging and, perhaps, a sense of identity.
As human beings we tend to take for granted things that are always available to us but are also essential to our well-being. For instance, the air we breathe, while absolutely essential for life, is something we haven’t learned to fully appreciate because it’s always there. Having a mother and father around, while not necessarily life-sustaining, is another thing many people take for granted. Having a land to call one’s own is also something that tends to get noticed only its absence.
That’s why as Cambodians we must learn to cherish what we already have, rather than to chase what’s “out there.” With all the focus on the negative aspects of Cambodia, we still have a country that we can call “home.” This is not a privilege enjoyed by everyone– including the Chams, the Khmer Krom, or even the Cambodian Americans.
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(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5) Loading ...People’s Daily Online
February 09, 2007
Cambodia expects to receive 2 million tourists in 2007, local media reported on Thursday.
“We hope, based on predictions, that the number of tourists to Cambodia will grow to two million in 2007,” Tourism Minister Lay Prohas was quoted by the Koh Santepheap as saying during a ministerial conference.
Deputy Prime Minister Nhiek Bun Chhay was quoted as saying that “We should advertise more broadly to attract tourists to our country, and motivate them to stay longer, travel further and spend more money, and we can do so depending on good security and a clean environment. These factors are dependent on officials of local authorities across the country’s 24 municipalities and provinces,”
Oudam’s Comments:
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Although Cambodia has benefited greatly from tourism, I should point out that not all tourism is good for the country.
Cambodia is currently being swamped by foreign sex tourists and pedophiles. Sex tourists don’t go to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat or stay in 5-star hotels. And they don’t take their families along to spend money in our country.
The prevalence of sex tourists in Cambodia could harm the country’s tourism industry by driving away family-oriented tourists, as brothels, bars and nightclubs replace Angkor Wat and Toul Sleng as the country’s main attractions.
That Cambodia has the highest HIV infection in Asia should deter some sex tourists from visiting the country, unless, of course, they are already HIV-positive themselves. Riding along Monivong Boulevard, I see countless young Cambodian prostitutes, many of whom apparently underaged, with Western sex tourists bearing signs of full-blown AIDS. Far from contributing to the Cambodian economy, HIV-positive sex tourists will contribute to the spread of the AIDS epedemics, leaving an already impoverished country to pick up the bills for their sexual exploits.
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