The return of Jon Swain

Notable 60s-era Vietnam war correspondent Jon Swain is back in Cambodia. So what does the award-winning journalist who witnessed first-hand the fall of Phnom Penh think is today’s most important Cambodian story?

As dusk falls, the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh is at its most appealing. It is bathed in a soft and purplish evening light. The air is filled with tropical scents. Lovers stroll along the river bank by the old Royal Palace. The visions of Cambodia at peace after years torn by civil war are enchanting.

But the glitter of dusk over the city hides an ugly reality. For all of its exotic charm, Phnom Penh can be a cruel place. It is a city of terrible sexual exploitation and depravity. Between the Independence Monument and the Mekong lies a municipal park where desperate sex slaves – teenage girls – sit on benches selling their bodies.

It is, apparently, impossible for the media to write honestly about Cambodia. But read the whole story. What it’s missing in accuracy it makes up for in luridness. And although probably unintended, Swain’s story does posit a rather important question: Is the commercial sexual exploitation of people in Cambodia getting worse, or better, or staying about the same?

Circumstantial evidence rather suggests that Cambodia’s sex industry, if not at an all-time low, is certainly not the thriving industry it was 15, or even 10 or five, years ago. Phnom Penh’s most notorious red-light districts — Street 63 downtown, Street 71 in Tuol Kork, the Sotheros ghetto and Sway Pak — have all essentially disappeared.

Perhaps this industry has just gone underground. Or dispersed to Siem Reap, Sihanoukville and the border-casino areas. Perhaps those children are these days trafficked further on — to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong — so their presence in the capital is less obvious. Perhaps, too, Cambodia’s recent economic growth has helped ease the desperation in the countryside, and made a few more families a bit less willing to sell off their daughters.

Perhaps it’s a bit of all of those things. It really is difficult to know. Sadly, nobody seems terribly interested in finding any answers. So instead of an honest account of an absolutely horrifying problem, what little there is to go on are the half-baked accounts of hack journalists and their often equally fact-free NGO counterparts. All of which does no one any good, certainly not those children most desperately in need of a savior.