Vox News

Pushing Fear: The Child Sex Slave Meme

This article was to be the story of a direct rescue of a child from child sexual slavery. But it evolved into an examination of fear, how it grips the mind and is used as the catalyst for imperialist aggression. It is an examination on how Children are used in the great geostrategic game of imperialism.

  Children's charities are a multi million dollar industry that thrives on the Internet and on television advertisements. Its appeals touch the nerve center of most sentient beings and its political presence sits at the vanguard of western governments, media and religious organizations as they push for imperial hegemony in the third world. 

It is one of the twin fears used as potent population control methodologies both here and abroad. This is the fear from the near, "The Predator," which coupled with the fear from afar, "The Terrorist" have proven to be a potent mix if one is serving a cocktail of control through fear.

These memes have now found their way into imperialist pushes. In every "revolution" of the so called people power rebellions sweeping the arab world we see the familiar "rape story" there to incite the population into a state of "useful indignation." 

The developing world is faced with severe challenges. malnutrition, endemic poverty, violence, endemic political corruption and very real dangers to children are present. A realistic examination of the problems and priorities of the crisis facing the children of the world is the way forward. But as the probe ensued the evidence of the wide scale prostitution of minors was unable to be found. The story shifted from the idea of a "heroic child rescue" to a report on fear as the central political motivational force in society. And how the sensationalism of the media and organizations ends up as great news hooks and witch hunts but fails to address the core causes of the problem and in some cases may exacerbate it.

 Cambodia, devastated by the Vietnam conflict and about a solid decade of genocide was emerging from the grip of a brutal murderous government and in 1992 the UN Peace keeping force entered Cambodia to assist with the transition. 

 Immediately after the UN moved in, stories of organized child brothels to service the UN troops emerged. And Cambodia has since then acquired an accurate reputation as a child sex destination. The region rocked by the Vietnam conflict was used to rapidly mobilizing prostitution to service US soldiers. But a darker side emerged to feed the demand of the UN Peacekeepers - the emergence of organized child prostitution in Cambodia is cited by most experts on the subject as the direct result of the presence of the UN force. 

Through a number of highly publicized undercover operations by US television networks and others, the government has responded to the pressure and cracked down on the dark trade, closing the brothels and raiding rouge karaoke bars and effectively halted the trade, but reports claimed it was still booming. The idea was get the story and make a rescue at the same time. 

 Voxnews went underground in Cambodia to see this industry and rescue a child from it, but found instead where sensationalism ends and the reality begins.

Posing as a sex tourist, tuk tuk drivers, hotel personnel, pimps and madams who offered sexual services were queried regarding the availability of child prostitute. The typical immediate response was that such offerings were not available in Cambodia. Those probed who did claim to be able to procure an underaged prostitute delivered a prostitute who appeared to be no younger than eighteen. And while this reality at any age is a grim one, confirmation of the availability of ten year old child prostitutes as routinely promoted by organizations and the media could not be verified by the thorough and somewhat dangerous examination of the present conditions on the ground.

In a country where prostitution of minors is often protected by high ranking military officials and police you risk your life when you cover stories like these and if you attempt to rescue their "product" the danger is greatly increased. So even trusting the police in these circumstances is a genuine risk.

The plan was to locate a child prostitute then simply rescue her by separating her from the pimp through a distraction or via a pre arranged way to remove the girl from the procurer and bring the girl to the US consulate and make the police report of the rescue from there. This way multiple layers of bureaucracy would be involved lessening the possibility that girl will simply be returned to the brothel owner by the police (and lessening the chance that any danger may befall the journalist.)

The tuk tuk drivers are well known to be the front lines of this seedy business, they know all the spots and brothels. For a western male in Cambodia, simply taking a ride in a tuk tuk will undoubtedly end with the driver asking if you want a prostitute. So it's not so much a search but a filtering process. A typical conversation went like this:

Tuk Tuk Driver: You like a girl?

VoxNews: Maybe.

TT: I bring you there.

VN: Well I'm looking for something special.

TT: Beautiful girls many.

VN: How old are they?

TT: Oh young girls, eighteen, nineteen.

VN: Well, I was curious about the availability of something a little younger.

TT: How old?

VN: Are thirteen year olds available?

TT: (Laughs) oh no sorry not have, eighteen is very young, very good for you.

VN: Yes but the Internet has many stories about young girls available?

TT: No sorry no have girls thirteen in Cambodia.

VN: On the internet there are many stories about young girls here in Cambodia - there must be some place?

TT: Sorry sir, no have in Cambodia.

Driver after driver turned up similar results. Several claimed to be able to procure a girl only to bring this worn out reporter to brothel after brothel with still no sign of a child prostitute. After a few days and a few different angles all efforts of this probe turned up the same thing, No signs of children in brothels or available via pimps, no signs whatsoever of any street prostitution involving children and no signs of solicitation of tourists by street children.

This means that Cambodia has come a long way from it's wild and wholly days of the United Nation Peacekeepers who arrived in 1992 and literally fueled the most outrageous manifestations of the commercial abuse of children in Cambodia's history. This was the UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia) which came into Cambodia and within months a burgeoning child sex trade kicked into full swing to service the peacekeepers. Fearful of the spread of AIDS, the Peacekeepers demanded younger and younger girls.

So the imperialist force moves into the region to protect it. Promptly followed by a bristling child sex industry overnight to service it and then when the UN's mission is over, other entities of the same imperialist power who caused the problem in the first place, step in to condemn the horrendous result of the first incursion (while likely to not recognize it's genesis) and offer the solution, which is a mix of Jesus Christ, crushing IMF debt and skills training programs (sewing mainly) to help dig their way out of the debt. And this is one of the many ways the US has "helped" the people of Southeast Asia since we fist involved ourselves in the region.

This process is the same as it was in Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand thirty years prior - where American's go to war the brothel industry springs up to collect.

But in Cambodia today it doesn't appear to be the massive industry that it's described as on the websites of the many charities who have this as their raison d'être. In a week and a half probing the dark underbelly of Cambodia's various, brothels, karaoke houses, tuk tuk drivers, pimps, mamasans and assorted dregs, all leads to this "thriving industry" came up empty. There is no doubt that cases exist, as anecdotal news stories report, but it appears on a much more local and smaller scale and not the vast industry it's described as or would warrant international sanctions, sensationalist media intervention and swarms of NGO's all of which amount to an imperial "putsch" as much as a solution for protecting the rights of children in that poor nation.

The constant beating of the fear drum has proven time and again to be the note of choice to strike in this modern age. There is an intended effect and a set of real side effects that buffet through even magnanimous seemingly altruistic efforts such as the many non governmental missions to Cambodia but the real effects often ending up causing more harm than help.

In a demand to clean up a brothel street by the central lake in the capital, Phnom Penn, the government instead kicked out ALL of the poor people who have lived there for years and leased this central lake to a South Korean developer who promptly filled it in as a foundation to a gleaming modern center of luxury hi rises, smack in the middle of where a large very poor population used to be. The Cambodian people get nothing, the tourists get a new casino city and vast numbers of Cambodian children remain as or more destitute than before. 

The net effect is not that the lives of the people are improving, the real net effect for many is that the lives of the people are getting worse. And the vehicle of choice of western NGO's in Cambodia - The Lexus SUV.

Western NGOs do provide relief for a small percentage of the population of Cambodia but the better solution for Cambodia is for the people to build their own country again - but like in all countries, their political leadership is selling Cambodia to the highest bidder. Like in America, the people of Cambodia need a government who represents the interests of the people and that is not happening. And while these programs may help a select few, the population is suffering. One critic of NGOs in cambodia (a longtime NGO himself in Cambodia) made the observation that if the NGOs collectively sold their Lexus SUVs they could simply purchase land for vast numbers of peasants and solve the problem quickly.

The kind of fear pushing using children takes on a life of it's own where armchair bloggers and moralists alike pick up on a few of these memes and build these issues to a crescendo that supersedes the size of the original problem. Like a chain letter that keeps generating copies of itself, fear memes like these always go viral. 

Often with no field research to back them up, these fear memes compile the most flagrant and incredulous myths and sensationalize them even further.

In an article published in 2008, writer Gordon Thomas compiles what seems to be a collection of sensational claims, many of which were lifted from other sensational stories found on the Internet on the subject and some loony statistics about the financial magnitude of the industry. The "facts" make for catchy news items but few have basis in fact.  

In his article Thomas reports: "Its (child prostitution's) annual revenues were estimated in 2003 to exceed half a trillion dollars globally. This is twice the value of all United States currency currently in circulation at any given time." Embellishing it with a ludicrous analogy, Thomas continues, "To understand the sheer size of profits accruing from such terrible misery, consider this: a million dollars in gold would weigh as much as a Japanese Sumo wrestler. A half trillion dollars would come close to exceeding the entire population weight of a medium sized Australian city."

Then further down in the article he quotes the tired internet myth that the children are often only paid with sweets or a pack of cigarettes. Hardly the half trillion dollar industry.

Sensationalism works, and on the internet sensationalism is as simple as cut and paste. And that's just what has happened. Many articles have part or all of their content from a few source stories from 20 years ago or more. 

Scores of Christian charities like WorldVision have built multi million dollar organizations by pushing these fear from the near meme buttons of the child sex slave. 

Are stories of children being used as a tool for imperialism and worse as a cover story to perpetuate the very abuse itself?

The region has more than a few examples like Nicholas Patrick Griffin, who set up an orphanage to save the children from the clutches of the sex industry… it was later revealed that Griffin was involved in sexual abuse of some of the children in his care. It should have raised flags when Griffin ordered the construction of ten foot high solid barricade walls around the orphanage. Then when children started coming forward and testifying they were abused inside the orphanage - Griffin was finally arrested. 

The question is were they better off before or after our "help."

end of part1

next week

Part 2: The plan to free a sex slave.

Part 3: Fear memes used in Europe.

Part 4: The orphanage with 10 foot walls.