LITTLE LIVE MUSIC, TOO MUCH HUMAN TRAFFICKING

For popular western music, there are few live bands in Cambodia (photo: Wikipedia)

One hopping Saturday night in downtown Phnom Penh, I went to Touk Bar, a reputable upstairs venue with a view of the Tonle Sap River. For once they had live music; a four piece band playing cover tunes. Years back I was a drummer myself, and listening to this ensemble, I'm amused. The band's drummer was really screwing it up. He was so out of touch with the other musicians, he didn't know when to stop playing as each song ended. Obviously he’d never played with this band before.

I asked the Canadian bar manager what was going on. Her answer: “Their regular drummer is in hiding. The police are looking for him on a charge of human trafficking.”

It's not surprising that the state of live music performance in Southeast Asia, is far less developed than in western countries. An odd phenomenon of live music in the region, is that although western music is very popular, few local bands can play western music well. Where there is live music in the capital cities, the best bands are from the Philippines. With more English speakers and freedom to perform, Filipino bands have filled the gap.

A popular downtown place for expats is Huxley’s a straight-laced English Pub. Unlike many of their neighboring bars, Huxley’s doesn’t allow prostitutes inside. Again, I went in on a rare night with a live band. Their name: ‘Stiff Little Punks’. I’d seen flyers advertising this gig, they promoted themselves as “The Worst Punk band in Cambodia”. It's more accurate to call them the only punk band in Cambodia.  

Playing in a tight upstairs space, I saw they were also the smallest band in Cambodia, with only two members. They included a lead singer, and a guitarist who sang background, and added digital music through foot pedals. Of course these weren’t full time musicians. I knew the lead singer, and his main job is teaching English. After hearing them play, I had to agree. They were the worst punk band in Cambodia.

As far as Phnom Penh's night life went, this is a tame place. Another night I happened to walk past Huxley’s, when I saw a big crowd across the street in front of Iris Bar. This was a ‘hostess bar’; a euphemism for a girlie bar. Prostitution is illegal in Cambodia, but police still allow it. There were many policemen present, an unusual sight. Their presence drew an even larger crowd of Khmer onlookers.

Across Southeast Asia, visiting bands from the Philippines play the best rock and roll.

The police were in the process of shutting down the Iris Bar. Before I arrived, they had arrested the Korean owner, and all the Khmer women who worked there. Everyone was hauled away in a police truck. The police then loaded all the bar's furniture into another truck, and hauled that away too. When the bar was emptied of its contents, the police locked up the front doors for good. I asked around as to why this bar was raided. It turns out that the Korean owner was unpopular in the neighborhood. He had forced his hostess women to work as prostitutes.

Fortunately not all bars and discos are of ill repute. But unfortunately for the women that work them, there is a stigma. Since Cambodia is still traditional and conservative, a ‘good woman’ would never work in a bar. Of course not all bar hostesses work as prostitutes, but given the low hostess salaries, it's not surprising that many turn to prostitution to increase their income. Such work also exposes innocent women to exploitation, as in the case with this Korean owner.

Predictably, Khmer values also look down on other things culturally accepted by western women. “In Cambodia, ladies who smoke are prostitutes,” a local woman once told me.

“Only prostitutes have tattoos,” was another prejudiced comment I heard. With the growing influence of western culture in Cambodia, such untraditional behaviors and fashions are becoming more common for women in Phnom Penh.

A week later, I walked this street again. Across from the closed Iris Bar, the police raided another nightspot; ‘Cheerleaders Bar’. I'd never been inside here either, but the police tactics were the same. The Khmer ‘hostesses’ were all packed onto the back of a waiting police truck. The furniture was carted away, and the English owner arrested; jailed just like the Korean owner had been. They weren't alone; the police had raided five city girlie bars in the past two weeks.  One was owned by a Singaporean; he had been trafficking women in from the Philippines for forced prostitution. Additional bars were raided and shut down in the city of Siem Reap. All were owned by expatriates. This must have been a campaign to reduce the girlie bars, or so I thought.

I was only partly right. An American owner of a legal bar filled me in on what was really happening. The police had shown up at some of the expat owned bars known to have Khmer women dancing. Some had pole dancing. None had strippers, though most had hookers. It seems that the police didn’t want Phnom Penh to turn into the next Bangkok. So they told the owners: remove those dancing poles, give the police $6,000, and they could stay open. If they didn’t comply with both of those directives, they were shut down.

The police also shut down a couple of Khmer owned bars, but not many. The American owner said that there just wasn’t enough money in them for the police to bother. For the expat owned bars, he had this explanation for me. “Cambodians don’t like anyone pimping their women, except Cambodians.”

Another American I knew in town, who spent too much time with prostitutes, was upset at all of these arrests and closures. He complained, “This is the US embassy’s fault! It’s all because they gave Cambodia a poor rating on the human trafficking list.”

The American had his anger and blame pointed in the wrong direction. Besides closing a few bars, Cambodia still has major problems with human trafficking, even worse than human trafficking in Vietnam. Many thousands of Cambodians, mainly women and children, are still victims of human trafficking every year. In addition to prostitution, many are forced to work in sweatshops as slave labor. The Cambodian government does little to stop the human trafficking scourge.

TV AND FORBIDDEN FOREIGN MARRIAGE

Local TV seems locked in the 1970's

Taking some time to relax in my downtown hotel room, I stretch out on my twin bed that’s too small, and turn on the boxy old television. Flat screen TV’s aren’t so common in Laos these days. 

Surfing the channels on offer, local shows aren’t much to look at, since Lao TV is still government controlled. Like their communist neighbors in Vietnam and China, Laos has allowed economic liberalism, while maintaining tight control of public media. Production quality is low; some of the current shows on television look like they were made in the 1970’s. 

Fortunately for the viewers of Vientiane, TV’s here receive broadcasts from the other side of the Mekong. The highly developed media from the relatively free country of Thailand produces the most popular shows in Laos, especially the Thai soap operas. Since the Thai and Lao languages are very similar, most Laotians comprehend Thai TV shows quite well. These shows add to the ongoing love-hate relationship that Laos has with Thailand. 

I don’t speak Thai or Lao, so I’d like to go online, but my room doesn’t have wifi. There’s no hardwire internet connection either. Fortunately the hotel lobby has a computer for internet use. There are also a few internet cafés in town, filled with foreign backpackers doing email, with a few Laotian teenagers doing chat. There isn’t much internet censorship in Laos yet, for the most part it remains relatively open. Relatively few Laotians can even afford internet access, so it's not much of a threat to the current government. Not yet anyway. 

While the internet and Thai TV continue to get around the Laotian government censors, the local Lao newspapers don’t. Case in point is a copy of the local English language newspaper that I’ve bought, ‘The Vientiane Times’. 

I scan the front page, and a front page headline says, “Recognition for Skilled Workers on the Way.” Great reading, if you want to go to sleep. To a westerner like me, government controlled news is hardly news at all. 

Lane Xang Hotel in Vientiane, you foreigners with Laotian girlfriends, stay out!

I find one notable and story inside, with a misleading title: “Police ensure Lao women have good husbands.” While the title sounds ludicrous, the story actually refers to Laotian women and their foreign husbands, and to the ongoing problem of human trafficking. It’s a fact that arranged marriages are sometimes connected to human trafficking, a serious problem in Southeast Asia. Some women are pushed into sham marriages, and then forced into prostitution. Others have been pressed into jobs with slave labor conditions. 

The story goes on to mention that some foreigners with criminal backgrounds had been marrying Laotian women, solely so that they could stay in Laos indefinitely without visa problems. 

Foreigners with serious Lao girlfriends are not allowed to bring them into local hotels. This brings up the issue of senior westerners coming to Laos, and marrying young Lao ladies. These marriages are officially discouraged; clear discrimination. A local news story cites a case where the government is withholding official approval of a marriage between a 21 year old Laotian woman, and a foreign man in his 60’s. 

 “Police were suspicious about the marriage, believing the man would treat the young woman like a servant,” the newspaper says. Obviously that's a double standard. In this male dominated society, police believe it’s ok for Laotian men to treat their wives like servants, but not foreigners. 

The paper later quotes a Laotian Brigadier General as saying, “it is unbelievable that a man aged over 60 is unmarried.” 

Apparently this general has never heard of bachelorhood, or a western divorce! 

HOLLYWOOD, HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND VIETNAM

US TV shows can be viewed in Vietnam

I'm watching TV in my hotel room, and I'm surprised by what I see. I'm expecting bland communist programming, but I find television in Vietnam has taken a very western bend. Flipping through channels, I find the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and many of their familiar shows are dubbed or subtitled into Vietnamese. The rise of satellite TV here has revolutionized the media.  

Even away from cable and satellite networks, even locally produced shows rise from western influences. I was amused one night to watch a competitive dance show, which looked much like ‘Dancing with the Stars’. Another channel had the Vietnamese version of the game show, “The Price is Right”. The popular show had similar games for the contestants, who wore familiar yellow name tags. Even the theme song was the same!

As for popular movies, American made blockbusters are making it to Vietnam’s many multi-screen theaters. If a hit movie can’t be seen there, they can easily be found on pirated DVD’s, sold by vendors on the city streets. Banning movies from theaters, only increases their sales on the black market.

It’s no surprise that most American made movies on the Vietnam War aren't seen

Dustin Nguyen of 21 Jump Street returned to Vietnam

in theaters here, or on Vietnamese TV either. But there are already plenty of locally made war movies showing the Vietnamese side of the war, with the Americans and French depicted as the villains. In recent years, Vietnam has developed a growing local film community, producing privately made films in Vietnamese. Their films aren’t about drab old socialist themes either, but are of popular genres. Rather than flicks about communism, there are comedies, musicals, love stories, and even horror flicks.

I once went to an action movie, with a title that translated as, “The Legend Lives”. The film stars Dustin Nguyen, who made his name as an American actor on the 1980’s teen cop show ’21 Jump Street’. Back then, he starred with none other than future movie star Johnny Depp. Nguyen left Vietnam as a child refugee, and in addition to his American acting career, he recently became a star in his former homeland as a 'Viet kieu', a returning Vietnamese. This local film is a martial arts movie with a message, and highlights a major problem in Vietnam today: human trafficking.

As we meet Nguyen’s character, he is mentally handicapped living in a Buddhist temple. His mother is a martial arts master, and she improbably tells him that his father is the great Bruce Lee.
 
It's eventually revealed that neither his mother, nor Bruce Lee are his real parents; his actual mom was a single mother exposed to agent orange. The slow witted but quick fisted young man later takes on human traffickers, when he witnesses them kidnapping a Vietnamese teenager. The gangsters aim to force the girl into prostitution. 

Vulnerable homeless man sleeps in Hanoi ATM booth

The movie has a happy ending and the teenage girl is saved, but the message to Vietnamese audiences is clear. In real life, human trafficking is indeed a major problem in Vietnam. Ironically, human trafficking has worsened in Vietnam due to the rise in individual freedoms, mainly the freedom to travel. Passports for Vietnamese used to be a rarity, now they're fairly common.  

With the opening of Vietnam’s borders, the rise of globalization, and with passports available to average citizens, conditions became ripe for human traffickers to take advantage of poor Vietnamese for their own profit. Many young people leave Vietnam every year, traveling overseas with hopes and dreams of finding better paid work. As a result, thousands of vulnerable Vietnamese women and girls have been forced into prostitution against their will, with many more trapped as forced laborers. They are trafficked not only within Vietnam, but also to numerous foreign countries. 

As to how many Vietnamese have been trafficked, nobody knows for sure. The government has admitted that 2,935 were victims of human trafficking during a five year period, but a spokesperson admitted the problem is worsening. The advocacy group Hagar International puts the number far higher. They say that 400,000 were human trafficking victims since 1990, which included men, women and children. 

In a 2003 ordinance passed for the prevention of prostitution, sex trafficking in Vietnam was outlawed. Recent laws have resulted in the conviction of hundreds of human traffickers, but the problem persists. As long as there is poverty and corruption in Vietnam, it will be difficult to eliminate the scourge of human trafficking.
 

PEDOPHILE FIGHTER OF NHA TRANG

Nha Trang street scene, near the beach

One night I was out dining in a restaurant in the south, when the largest Vietnamese man I had ever seen approached me.

He asked,  “Would you take our picture?” 

I obliged, and taking his camera, snapped a photo of him and his wife, a beautiful blonde American. He had to be one of the tallest, most muscular men in all of Vietnam. I had no doubt that he was Vietnamese, but he spoke perfect English. I recognized him, but decided not to intrude on his privacy. I had just encountered Vietnam’s most famous refugee of today. The burly man was Dat Nguyen, former linebacker of the Dallas Cowboys in the National Football League.

The Vietnamese have a name for former refugees like Dat, that have returned to Vietnam. They call them Viet kieu, which means ‘returning Vietnamese’. Most of these refugees have returned in the years after the economy liberalized. Some like Dat Nguyen come back only to visit, while others move back for the long term and invest in local business. The Vietnamese who never left tend to view these returnees suspiciously, although they still do business with them.

In Nha Trang, I met a very unique returning refugee named Kim. She was one of the Viet Kieu who came back and stayed. Being of Chinese descent, her family fled as refugees in 1980, after the border war with China. At  the time the Vietnamese government was repressing the country’s ethnic Chinese.

“I lived in Canada,” Kim told me, but her stay there wasn’t permanent. After reaching adulthood, she returned to Nha Trang in the 1990’s as a teacher, and later opened a bar. Settling in for the long term, she became part of the community.

One day outside a pagoda, she was speaking to a Vietnamese street child, and was horrified to learn that the youngster was a child prostitute. Investigating further, she came to learn that child prostitution in Nha Trang had become a serious problem.

By 2002, Nha Trang had become a seedy location for pedophiles to meet their victims. The beach was littered with syringes, used condoms and other rubbish. The town had become a foreign pedophile magnet.

Unbelievably, local police paid little attention to the problem, even though some of these children were human trafficking victims. They had been brought down from a poor village in the north, forced to sell postcards in Nha Trang. When Kim tried to have some of the pedophiles arrested, the police told her, “What do you care? They’re not your children.”

Frustrated at their unwillingness to pursue these perverts, Kim and her Australian boyfriend began fighting the pedophiles themselves, sometimes literally. In more than one instance, they physically attacked these men.

“The police started calling me ‘Crazy Kim’, she told me in her pub. “That’s why I call this Crazy Kim’s Bar.”

'Crazy Kim' speaks to the children at her annual Christmas Party

As she sought to have the pedophiles prosecuted, she fed information to the local police, foreign police, and even to Interpol. Her Australian boyfriend helped with her crusade for a while, but he eventually left. The lack of action by local police was frustrating. Still, there was some progress. Two pedophiles who had been visiting Nha Trang, were convicted and imprisoned in Germany.

International media eventually brought the problem of foreign pedophiles in Vietnam to the world’s attention. In 2005, the infamous rock star Gary Glitter made headlines when he was arrested and convicted for abusing two underage Vietnamese girls in Vung Tau, another beach town further south. He was convicted, and spent two years and nine months in prison before being deported in 2008.

As Kim got to know the street kids better, she learned that none of the children were attending school. So she expanded her assistance to include education, and she opened a room adjacent to her bar as a one room schoolhouse.

Crazy Kim’s Bar also began selling t-shirts, emblazoned with the warning message, “Hands Off the Kids”. Some of the street children began wearing the shirts as well.

Seeing my interest in Kim’s work on behalf of the children, Kim said to me, “Next week we’re having a Christmas party for Nha Trang children. Would you like to come?”

How could I refuse? Most Vietnamese are Buddhists, but the spirit of giving at Christmas isn’t just for Christians. It’s a time to share with everyone, especially with children in need such as these.

I came to the party, and what a sight it was. The children packed the bar’s back room for the festivities. As I greeted Kim, one boy who looked about eight walked in, and immediately approached her. He gave Kim a big hug, before joining the party. As he walked away, Kim told me his situation. “His mother is a prostitute.”

Nha Trang's children enjoy themselves at Crazy Kim's Christmas party

Not all of the children attending were street kids, this party was inclusive. For the children from tough backgrounds, today was a day they could forget about their problems. Kim left me to attend to the party, and I watched the celebration in amazement. The children received Santa hats, and donated presents. Older children helped the younger kids with food and refreshments. For entertainment, they had a DJ, karaoke, and a hip-hop dancing show. The children ate it all up. A good time was had by all.
 
In recent years Nha Trang's beachfront has been mostly cleaned up, both of trash, and the pedophiles. Now it’s clean, suitable for family vacations. The beach is popular with foreigners and Vietnamese alike. 

With Nha Trang’s public image vastly improved, the beach town hosted the 2008 Miss Universe Pageant. Won by Miss Venezuela, the event was broadcast worldwide. With that kind of exposure, it’s no surprise that Nha Trang has become the most popular beach destination in all of Vietnam

Through Kim’s work protecting the children, and through her efforts to draw  public attention to the problem, the number of foreign pedophiles visiting Nha Trang has declined drastically. Today, her classroom continues teaching the kids, only now many of those attending are not just abused street children, but also kids from poor families.

Now in her 40s, Kim has put on a few pounds since those early years. She doesn’t have any children of her own, but one thing is certain. Kim’s efforts to protect Nha Trang’s street kids have saved countless Vietnamese children from sexual abuse. Vietnam's foreign pedophile problem has not been totally eliminated, but thanks to Kim, it has been reduced.

Who says that one person can’t make a difference?