I never get a direct answer whenever I ask Jim, David B. and others direct questions about the bad side of Thaksin, and whether that is desirable behaviour of a PM.
We obviously see things differently, so I think it’s time I gave up.
I will leave you with a quote from MK Connors:
“Any legitimacy he may have had as a consequence of being selected prime minister by elected representatives was negated by his actions in that position.”
Child prostitution is, in itself, torture. Anyone who seriously believes that a child would consent to entering into the sex trade, or that the child sex trade is in any way OK, or that there are any benefits to the community that child has been removed from, is deluded. (A curly short of a pudenda, I’d say!)
I would go so far as to say that even the adult sex trade in S.E.Asia, in a very large number of cases, is evil. The notion that unmarried girls (and boys too) should be coerced into leaving rural villages in order to go to Bangkok brothels, for example, so that they can pay off their families’ debts & buy them 4-wheel drive vehicles is disgusting. Yes, some do get used to it & even marry European retirees, etc., who they often rob blind, but many finish with AIDS, drug and alcohol problems, and many also finish up dead from suicide, or murdered by drunken pimps.
Of course those who have been introduced into the industry as kids return to it after being ‘freed.’ Unless they are incredibly resilient, they no longer have a place in the world they came from, & in any case, it’s been shown beyond any doubt that children who have been introduced by adults to sex in any society, become addicted to sex (a very large percentage of paedophiles in developed countries themselves become paedophiles as adults). A large number of them also become alcoholics, drug addicts (or the victims of ‘protectors’ who are) and develop serious mental problems.
How can anyone imagine that any family has a right to pressure someone they brought into the world to adopt that kind of lifestyle, either as a child or a young adult?
So, yes: reporters should publicize these issues. And if their efforts are sometimes clumsy & seem to be ‘voyeuristic,’ mai pen rai. At least they are keeping it all in the public gaze. Dennis O’Rourke’s effort made me cringe. It was a real ‘bleeding heart’ effort, and as far as I can remember, led many to believe that the problem was created by farang sex-tourists. Let me assure anyone who believes it was, that there are acres of short-time hotels and massage parlours in every town in Thailand, as well as (perhaps less openly) in all the surrounding countries, and they cater to locals, as they have in various guises for centuries.
It’s a very well-established part of the cultures of this region. I am amazed at the number of times I have been invited, at the end of a pleasant evening of eating & carousing with male Thai friends (mostly married with kids, all ‘educated,’ and in responsible career positions, including academia.) to accompany them to a brothel. It’s absolutely normal behaviour here. I don’t, of course, make a big deal of it – they’d think I was a nutter – but I ease my way out of it, simply because I find the idea of buying a human body, even if only for an hour, repugnant. It’s a form of slavery, whether it seems to be ‘voluntary’ or not, & it’s demeaning to both sides of the transaction. Further, many older men prefer to have sex with under-age prostitutes, for various reasons (e.g. they may not be infected yet; they may confer ‘youthfulness,’ a common superstitious belief of older men) .
And please don’t accuse me of taking the ‘moral high ground.’ This is related to the whole ‘patronage’ element which is deeply enmeshed in these cultures, and which prevents almost everyone from having self-determination.
Interesting that the Minister for Commerce in This Month’s Government is a former madam.
bosunj must take readers of NM to be nitwits. The rule of law argument here is a red herring. The Nicolaides case has been about ignoring the rule of law but about trying to make sure that it functions. There seems little rhyme or reason to the way the law is being applied here when compared with others cases involving foreigners or Thais. Enough has been said at NM about this and can be read again by those interested.
By the way, to be a little more relevant to the broader topic, the rule of law does not imply that laws can’t be created, changed, etc. One measure of laws is whether they are applied equally. Clearly, in terms of LM, there is no such equality before the law as this case indicates. Other cases include those against Sondhi Lim and PAD leaders on LM which have been treated in a completely different manner. That would suggest to fair-minded observers that this law is a political law deserving of serious reconsideration.
Your description of the reporter’s situation is very accurate I think and would seem to apply to Kristof as well.
But the additional layer with Kristof was how he was being treated by the girl in the documentary, smiling, seductive and pliant, as though he were just another type of “client”, not one who wanted to use her for sex but a more complicated client who wanted to “save her” and would pay far more money for the feeling of being “righteous” than her other clients paid for the “feeling” of sexual release.
A client who seemed to have an overwhelming need to be assured that his “intentions” were only “good” and that he was not like all the other clients in her brutal and Darwinistic life (not to speak of her mother, family, the brokers, the brothel owners, the Cambodia police and army).
None of this is to say a reporter should not be willing to journey into the darkness to get his or her story, but I find, for instance, your own journey into the darkness of Patpong that resulted in your powerful and penetrating book of photographs (PATPONG: BANGKOK’S TWILIGHT ZONE), far more illuminating and insightful than Kristof’s relatively superficial and sanctimonious journey into the much darker world of Cambodia’s child prostitution business.
Modthai, yes, and in regard to that land belonging to his ex-wife, he had this cleared through the Bank of Thailand at the time who in turn referred it to their own legal team first…So we can all see now what a sham the case against Thaksin is and how effective mass propaganda has been for the past three years, and consequently why the country’s coffers were hit heavily since Kor Mor Chor due to the propaganda machine emplaced its Prem-linked cronies at all levels. These are dark times indeed.
I’ve never been a fan of Chang Noi, and I honestly don’t understand how many people are, including many people here who I expect should have known better.
Here’s one small example why:
in the article “Monarchy, democracy, and the politics of polarisation” http://www.geocities.com/changnoi2/polarise.htm Chang Noi writes: In August 2001, he blurted out “I love people, I want to work for them,” and launched his career as a populist hero. He now loves democracy and wants to work for it.
(See the rest of the articel too and – notice this – the article is title “Monarchy…”)
I seriously ask Chang Noi : Would you ever write with the same critical, sarcastic posture you write here about Thaksin in the case of speeches by certain “YOU KNOW WHO”? If not, why not?
If the answer is it’s too dangerous or something of the sort, should you, everytime you write something with such ‘high-moral’ stand as this one, tell readers that your ‘democratic moral highground’ is exclusively applies to politicians.
If I raise such question, say 5 or 6 years ago, people could easily say it’s irrelevant. But, again I seriously ask : given what happened during the past few years, isn’t such question highly relevant?
Frankly, I’m sick of academics like Chnag Noi who show so much ‘courage’ against politicians.
Notice too that the central idea of the article is for Chang Noi to claim to be “against both sides” (song mai aw). Such a self-promotional claim!
In historical perspective, PAD is nothing, a ‘small actor’ in the current conflicts. How about a sarcastic, critical take on speeches by ‘certain person’?
I see the opposite picture to Rogera. The turbulence caused by the confrontation between the red shirts and the yellow shirts, brings progress to Siam. The status quo has hindered the societal development for so long. Stormy politics has shaked the country on serious issues such as corruption, patronage, and oligarchy. It is still a long way to go but the struggle has begun in a serious sense. For example, we now can ask Prem Tinsulanond (Chairman of the Privy Council) to move out from his military residence. He was supposed to evacuate when he retired many years ago. Double standard is unacceptable.
Perhaps a closer fit to the “moral ambiguity” of the reporter’s role in such situations is the 1991 documentary, The Good Woman of Bangkok in which filmmaker Dennis O’Rourke’s initiative to film the Patpong prostitute (I believe she’s from Issarn) whose services he rents develops into a voyeuristic journey where O’Rourke remains off camera with only his voice entering in to prod the young lady into retelling her life story. Eventually O’Rourke purchases a farm for the young lady and her family in an effort to rescue her from her situation. He comes back a year or so later to find that she has returned to prostitution in Bangkok.
People will still love Thaksin and it’s not just because they have benefit from his policy. How can you condemn a person if his faults have not been clearly proven. 3 years on the movement to legally charge Thaksin has been very weak. If Thak truly did something
spectacularly bad like he has been accused of, and as bias as we can see the court is, how come they have not been able to charge him more than signing a paper for his wife to buy a land??
I don’t really understand what you term there as moral ambiguity of Christoff’s role. I must admit that i do not remember the documentary you mentioned, i slightly remember that there was an issue about him having “bought” out several girls.
The problem is that investigating or reporting in such an environment is extreme by any means, and from a moral position, more than problematic.
What are you doing when interviewing a girl that is a slave? You go your way, and leave that girl in the awful position she is, or you “buy” her out, knowing that you can’t afford to buy every girl out, and that this money is going to be used to buy more girls.
How would you choose which girl to buy out, how would you deal with the responsibility such an interference now puts on you, that you will also now be responsible for making sure that she will have a better future and not be straight be sold back by the same people who sold her in the first place?
You do of course know that reporting might bring some awareness to the problem, and some action might be taken years down the line, but the people you interviewed will still be in a terrible situation, and reporting on them has the danger to have even worsened their situation.
This is a clear moral conundrum, especially in a country like Cambodia. Shall one report, or not, or how? No easy answer, i am afraid.
I did a seach in Thai “р╣Ар╕кр╕╖р╣Йр╕нр╣Бр╕Фр╕З р╕ар╕╣р╣Ар╕Бр╣Зр╕Х” and quite a few news came up.
There was also a guy from Prachatai who has been to one of their meetings.
I’ve read the comment here between Jim, nga, Wichain, and others and I think I have to make a bit of a comment here.
First of, I think this conversation is very suitable “IF” we are talking in the democratic environment. However, as Thailand is today, we dont even have that basic right like those in any other democratic countries. People still got charge with lese marjeste and poor people still dont have the basic right like the rich.
Now the first thing the Thais have to do is taken back the power that they have lost from the coup of 1951.
If you watch ASTV1 you will see the utter exorbitance of the PAD propaganda, celebrating the airport siege and Abhisit’s heave to power as “peoples’ victory” – not wondering as the channel is Sondhi’smedial outlet. But this utter arrogance won’t do the Abhisit administration any good. What the ASTV makers may consider as education of the mass on the blessing of PAD will in fact deepen the rift in Thai society. It is the mere lack of respect of different opinions and the inability to find a compromise that prevails in Thai society and the PAD shows it aggressively. The so-much prayed for unity of the Thai nation which has been engineered over the past decades is now cracking on political differences. Instead of self-glorification the PAD should rather work towards a national reconciliation as Abhisit tries to do.
However, when looking deeper, one can see the current rift of the Thai society as a work of Thaksin clique. His rise to power was like an uprising and defiance of the regions, especially the north and northeast. And his overt disrespect for the Thai elite only could conjure this drift. Thaksin came as a hero, unfortunately, his own greed and arrogance was less honourable.
On the other hand this crisis is the process in which the previously voiceless parts of Thai society emancipate themselves from being mere vote-bringer to an active player. The elite may have restored their power for now, but it is just a matter of time when the old order will be seriously challenged. Let’s hope that the Thai nation will not apart over it.
Bee Low Growen – if imprisonment, electroshock and eye-gouging occurred in “underground rooms”, only a pedant would persist in insisting that these are not basement dungeons.
Given that Kristof has actually provided evidence to support his case, it is clearly not his credibility that needs to be restored.
I am not doubting the brutal reality of Cambodia’s child prostitution business. What I found additionally disturbing in the Kristof documentary was the moral ambiguity of Kristof’s role and position in relation to the young girls he was “saving”.
His pretense of innocence in the face of the evil circumstances of the girls’ lives, a sort of sanctimonious Schadenfraude, with the security of that First Class ticket back to New York safely tucked in his back pocket along with an infinite ATM card……….
Thank you very much for that information. I would appreciate it if you, or anyone, could find a news report on this incident, so i can add it to my collection of background information.
About 10 years ago i did work on an extensive story on forced prostitution in Cambodia, and i have come across many such stories of torture, especially by electroshock (i did not come across tales of underground chambers though). Most of my interviews i did in brothels and not NGO centers. I have no doubt on the truth of these tales.
I also came across many former forced prostitutes that returned voluntarily to the brothels. One of the main reasons cited was that they were not accepted back into their village societies, and that after their experiences they felt themselves to damaged to return to a normal live.
Maybe some time in the future i should do a post here, with some of the photos i took there.
“She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive”….
Although I am not denying that there are cases where sex workers are subject to various forms of violence and coercion, I believe it is important to point out that given common psychological responses to trauma (withdrawal, extreme forms of anxiety, suicidal thoughts etc) it seems implausible that systematic torture is a conventional method used by brothel owners to enhance the marketability of sex workers.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
Torture
Bee Low Growen – The blog post you linked to does not refute the fact that Kristof proved the existence of the Phnom Penh basement dungeons.
The red army at the gates of parliament
I never get a direct answer whenever I ask Jim, David B. and others direct questions about the bad side of Thaksin, and whether that is desirable behaviour of a PM.
We obviously see things differently, so I think it’s time I gave up.
I will leave you with a quote from MK Connors:
“Any legitimacy he may have had as a consequence of being selected prime minister by elected representatives was negated by his actions in that position.”
Here is the link to the full article from which the above quote was taken:
http://sovereignmyth.blogspot.com/2007/09/standing-in-neither-camp-coup-year-on.html
I would recommend Jim & David read the full article – it is generally in accordance with the way I see things.
Torture
Child prostitution is, in itself, torture. Anyone who seriously believes that a child would consent to entering into the sex trade, or that the child sex trade is in any way OK, or that there are any benefits to the community that child has been removed from, is deluded. (A curly short of a pudenda, I’d say!)
I would go so far as to say that even the adult sex trade in S.E.Asia, in a very large number of cases, is evil. The notion that unmarried girls (and boys too) should be coerced into leaving rural villages in order to go to Bangkok brothels, for example, so that they can pay off their families’ debts & buy them 4-wheel drive vehicles is disgusting. Yes, some do get used to it & even marry European retirees, etc., who they often rob blind, but many finish with AIDS, drug and alcohol problems, and many also finish up dead from suicide, or murdered by drunken pimps.
Of course those who have been introduced into the industry as kids return to it after being ‘freed.’ Unless they are incredibly resilient, they no longer have a place in the world they came from, & in any case, it’s been shown beyond any doubt that children who have been introduced by adults to sex in any society, become addicted to sex (a very large percentage of paedophiles in developed countries themselves become paedophiles as adults). A large number of them also become alcoholics, drug addicts (or the victims of ‘protectors’ who are) and develop serious mental problems.
How can anyone imagine that any family has a right to pressure someone they brought into the world to adopt that kind of lifestyle, either as a child or a young adult?
So, yes: reporters should publicize these issues. And if their efforts are sometimes clumsy & seem to be ‘voyeuristic,’ mai pen rai. At least they are keeping it all in the public gaze. Dennis O’Rourke’s effort made me cringe. It was a real ‘bleeding heart’ effort, and as far as I can remember, led many to believe that the problem was created by farang sex-tourists. Let me assure anyone who believes it was, that there are acres of short-time hotels and massage parlours in every town in Thailand, as well as (perhaps less openly) in all the surrounding countries, and they cater to locals, as they have in various guises for centuries.
It’s a very well-established part of the cultures of this region. I am amazed at the number of times I have been invited, at the end of a pleasant evening of eating & carousing with male Thai friends (mostly married with kids, all ‘educated,’ and in responsible career positions, including academia.) to accompany them to a brothel. It’s absolutely normal behaviour here. I don’t, of course, make a big deal of it – they’d think I was a nutter – but I ease my way out of it, simply because I find the idea of buying a human body, even if only for an hour, repugnant. It’s a form of slavery, whether it seems to be ‘voluntary’ or not, & it’s demeaning to both sides of the transaction. Further, many older men prefer to have sex with under-age prostitutes, for various reasons (e.g. they may not be infected yet; they may confer ‘youthfulness,’ a common superstitious belief of older men) .
And please don’t accuse me of taking the ‘moral high ground.’ This is related to the whole ‘patronage’ element which is deeply enmeshed in these cultures, and which prevents almost everyone from having self-determination.
Interesting that the Minister for Commerce in This Month’s Government is a former madam.
Update on Harry Nicolaides
bosunj must take readers of NM to be nitwits. The rule of law argument here is a red herring. The Nicolaides case has been about ignoring the rule of law but about trying to make sure that it functions. There seems little rhyme or reason to the way the law is being applied here when compared with others cases involving foreigners or Thais. Enough has been said at NM about this and can be read again by those interested.
By the way, to be a little more relevant to the broader topic, the rule of law does not imply that laws can’t be created, changed, etc. One measure of laws is whether they are applied equally. Clearly, in terms of LM, there is no such equality before the law as this case indicates. Other cases include those against Sondhi Lim and PAD leaders on LM which have been treated in a completely different manner. That would suggest to fair-minded observers that this law is a political law deserving of serious reconsideration.
Torture
More about Kristof’s credibility and lack thereof, Alvin, in the Nonprofiteer. http://nonprofiteer.net/2009/01/07/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics/
Torture
Nick:
Your description of the reporter’s situation is very accurate I think and would seem to apply to Kristof as well.
But the additional layer with Kristof was how he was being treated by the girl in the documentary, smiling, seductive and pliant, as though he were just another type of “client”, not one who wanted to use her for sex but a more complicated client who wanted to “save her” and would pay far more money for the feeling of being “righteous” than her other clients paid for the “feeling” of sexual release.
A client who seemed to have an overwhelming need to be assured that his “intentions” were only “good” and that he was not like all the other clients in her brutal and Darwinistic life (not to speak of her mother, family, the brokers, the brothel owners, the Cambodia police and army).
None of this is to say a reporter should not be willing to journey into the darkness to get his or her story, but I find, for instance, your own journey into the darkness of Patpong that resulted in your powerful and penetrating book of photographs (PATPONG: BANGKOK’S TWILIGHT ZONE), far more illuminating and insightful than Kristof’s relatively superficial and sanctimonious journey into the much darker world of Cambodia’s child prostitution business.
The red army at the gates of parliament
Modthai, yes, and in regard to that land belonging to his ex-wife, he had this cleared through the Bank of Thailand at the time who in turn referred it to their own legal team first…So we can all see now what a sham the case against Thaksin is and how effective mass propaganda has been for the past three years, and consequently why the country’s coffers were hit heavily since Kor Mor Chor due to the propaganda machine emplaced its Prem-linked cronies at all levels. These are dark times indeed.
Chang Noi on the knowledge industry
I’ve never been a fan of Chang Noi, and I honestly don’t understand how many people are, including many people here who I expect should have known better.
Here’s one small example why:
in the article “Monarchy, democracy, and the politics of polarisation”
http://www.geocities.com/changnoi2/polarise.htm Chang Noi writes:
In August 2001, he blurted out “I love people, I want to work for them,” and launched his career as a populist hero. He now loves democracy and wants to work for it.
(See the rest of the articel too and – notice this – the article is title “Monarchy…”)
I seriously ask Chang Noi : Would you ever write with the same critical, sarcastic posture you write here about Thaksin in the case of speeches by certain “YOU KNOW WHO”? If not, why not?
If the answer is it’s too dangerous or something of the sort, should you, everytime you write something with such ‘high-moral’ stand as this one, tell readers that your ‘democratic moral highground’ is exclusively applies to politicians.
If I raise such question, say 5 or 6 years ago, people could easily say it’s irrelevant. But, again I seriously ask : given what happened during the past few years, isn’t such question highly relevant?
Frankly, I’m sick of academics like Chnag Noi who show so much ‘courage’ against politicians.
Notice too that the central idea of the article is for Chang Noi to claim to be “against both sides” (song mai aw). Such a self-promotional claim!
In historical perspective, PAD is nothing, a ‘small actor’ in the current conflicts. How about a sarcastic, critical take on speeches by ‘certain person’?
Red shirts and civil disobedience
I see the opposite picture to Rogera. The turbulence caused by the confrontation between the red shirts and the yellow shirts, brings progress to Siam. The status quo has hindered the societal development for so long. Stormy politics has shaked the country on serious issues such as corruption, patronage, and oligarchy. It is still a long way to go but the struggle has begun in a serious sense. For example, we now can ask Prem Tinsulanond (Chairman of the Privy Council) to move out from his military residence. He was supposed to evacuate when he retired many years ago. Double standard is unacceptable.
Torture
Perhaps a closer fit to the “moral ambiguity” of the reporter’s role in such situations is the 1991 documentary, The Good Woman of Bangkok in which filmmaker Dennis O’Rourke’s initiative to film the Patpong prostitute (I believe she’s from Issarn) whose services he rents develops into a voyeuristic journey where O’Rourke remains off camera with only his voice entering in to prod the young lady into retelling her life story. Eventually O’Rourke purchases a farm for the young lady and her family in an effort to rescue her from her situation. He comes back a year or so later to find that she has returned to prostitution in Bangkok.
The red army at the gates of parliament
Nga
People will still love Thaksin and it’s not just because they have benefit from his policy. How can you condemn a person if his faults have not been clearly proven. 3 years on the movement to legally charge Thaksin has been very weak. If Thak truly did something
spectacularly bad like he has been accused of, and as bias as we can see the court is, how come they have not been able to charge him more than signing a paper for his wife to buy a land??
Torture
“Chris”:
I don’t really understand what you term there as moral ambiguity of Christoff’s role. I must admit that i do not remember the documentary you mentioned, i slightly remember that there was an issue about him having “bought” out several girls.
The problem is that investigating or reporting in such an environment is extreme by any means, and from a moral position, more than problematic.
What are you doing when interviewing a girl that is a slave? You go your way, and leave that girl in the awful position she is, or you “buy” her out, knowing that you can’t afford to buy every girl out, and that this money is going to be used to buy more girls.
How would you choose which girl to buy out, how would you deal with the responsibility such an interference now puts on you, that you will also now be responsible for making sure that she will have a better future and not be straight be sold back by the same people who sold her in the first place?
You do of course know that reporting might bring some awareness to the problem, and some action might be taken years down the line, but the people you interviewed will still be in a terrible situation, and reporting on them has the danger to have even worsened their situation.
This is a clear moral conundrum, especially in a country like Cambodia. Shall one report, or not, or how? No easy answer, i am afraid.
The red army at the gates of parliament
I did a seach in Thai “р╣Ар╕кр╕╖р╣Йр╕нр╣Бр╕Фр╕З р╕ар╕╣р╣Ар╕Бр╣Зр╕Х” and quite a few news came up.
There was also a guy from Prachatai who has been to one of their meetings.
The red army at the gates of parliament
I’ve read the comment here between Jim, nga, Wichain, and others and I think I have to make a bit of a comment here.
First of, I think this conversation is very suitable “IF” we are talking in the democratic environment. However, as Thailand is today, we dont even have that basic right like those in any other democratic countries. People still got charge with lese marjeste and poor people still dont have the basic right like the rich.
Now the first thing the Thais have to do is taken back the power that they have lost from the coup of 1951.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Red or yellow?
If you watch ASTV1 you will see the utter exorbitance of the PAD propaganda, celebrating the airport siege and Abhisit’s heave to power as “peoples’ victory” – not wondering as the channel is Sondhi’smedial outlet. But this utter arrogance won’t do the Abhisit administration any good. What the ASTV makers may consider as education of the mass on the blessing of PAD will in fact deepen the rift in Thai society. It is the mere lack of respect of different opinions and the inability to find a compromise that prevails in Thai society and the PAD shows it aggressively. The so-much prayed for unity of the Thai nation which has been engineered over the past decades is now cracking on political differences. Instead of self-glorification the PAD should rather work towards a national reconciliation as Abhisit tries to do.
However, when looking deeper, one can see the current rift of the Thai society as a work of Thaksin clique. His rise to power was like an uprising and defiance of the regions, especially the north and northeast. And his overt disrespect for the Thai elite only could conjure this drift. Thaksin came as a hero, unfortunately, his own greed and arrogance was less honourable.
On the other hand this crisis is the process in which the previously voiceless parts of Thai society emancipate themselves from being mere vote-bringer to an active player. The elite may have restored their power for now, but it is just a matter of time when the old order will be seriously challenged. Let’s hope that the Thai nation will not apart over it.
Torture
Bee Low Growen – if imprisonment, electroshock and eye-gouging occurred in “underground rooms”, only a pedant would persist in insisting that these are not basement dungeons.
Given that Kristof has actually provided evidence to support his case, it is clearly not his credibility that needs to be restored.
Torture
Nick:
I am not doubting the brutal reality of Cambodia’s child prostitution business. What I found additionally disturbing in the Kristof documentary was the moral ambiguity of Kristof’s role and position in relation to the young girls he was “saving”.
His pretense of innocence in the face of the evil circumstances of the girls’ lives, a sort of sanctimonious Schadenfraude, with the security of that First Class ticket back to New York safely tucked in his back pocket along with an infinite ATM card……….
The red army at the gates of parliament
“ModThai”:
Thank you very much for that information. I would appreciate it if you, or anyone, could find a news report on this incident, so i can add it to my collection of background information.
Torture
“Chris”:
About 10 years ago i did work on an extensive story on forced prostitution in Cambodia, and i have come across many such stories of torture, especially by electroshock (i did not come across tales of underground chambers though). Most of my interviews i did in brothels and not NGO centers. I have no doubt on the truth of these tales.
I also came across many former forced prostitutes that returned voluntarily to the brothels. One of the main reasons cited was that they were not accepted back into their village societies, and that after their experiences they felt themselves to damaged to return to a normal live.
Maybe some time in the future i should do a post here, with some of the photos i took there.
Torture
“She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive”….
Although I am not denying that there are cases where sex workers are subject to various forms of violence and coercion, I believe it is important to point out that given common psychological responses to trauma (withdrawal, extreme forms of anxiety, suicidal thoughts etc) it seems implausible that systematic torture is a conventional method used by brothel owners to enhance the marketability of sex workers.