the citizen-viewer

I lived in Cambodia for a few years and I've never felt I found the right words to capture the experience, the sound and texture of Cambodia, in anything more than a small way. So it's admittedly a little painful when a professional stops by and shows how it can be done.

Scott Carrier has done it in Mother Jones magazine, in a story about slavery, or human trafficking as it's often called, in Cambodia. It's called In a Brothel Atop Street 63. (And I'm pleased to note there is a link to A Tragedy of No Importance right next to it.)

Scott's story ranges from the personal to the global in easy strides, making connections that are not often often enough made. Much as I appreciate the attention that the Times's Nick Kristof brings to under-reported issues like modern slavery, his approach is sometimes shallow and his strategies counterproductive. Scott doesn't make that mistake.

I don't know how long he was in Cambodia, but I lived just off Street 63 -- on a few occasions actually -- and there, and elsewhere in Cambodia, I saw many things, some of which I wish I hadn't seen. He gets it right, without playing the savior. An example:

The political system in Cambodia is shaped like a pyramid, where the people on the top can commit unspeakable crimes and the people on the bottom have no rights at all. Money, in the form of bribes and extortions, flows upward through the pyramid, and violence comes back down. This is the cultural mechanism of impunity. It’s where the slaves come from.

The U.S. State Department has published in its 2004 report on human trafficking that high-ranking members of the Cambodian government are directly involved in, and profit from, the sale of human beings—among the aid workers monitoring the trafficking, this is a well-known fact. The names are known but they are not spoken.

There is silence in the face of evil, and under this silence the phrase “human trafficking” becomes a bullshit term, propaganda, a way of labeling something we don’t understand in order to throw a lot of money at it while loudly saying we are winning the war against it.

That very short excerpt doesn't do justice to the whole article, which you should read when you get a chance. It's a story I wish I'd written, or could write.

Information on sexual exploitation of children in Cambodia