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<DIV class=timestamp>November 16, 2011</DIV>
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<H1><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">The Face of Modern
Slavery</NYT_HEADLINE></H1><NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=byline>By <A class=meta-per
title="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html?inline=nyt-per
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rel=author>NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF</A></H6></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
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<P>Phnom Penh, Cambodia </P>
<P>When I write about human trafficking as a modern form of slavery, people
sometimes tune out as their eyes glaze over. So, Glazed Eyes, meet Srey Pov.
</P>
<P>She’s a tough interview because she breaks down as she recalls her life in a
Cambodian brothel, and pretty soon my eyes are welling up, too. </P>
<P>Srey Pov’s family sold her to a brothel when she was 6 years old. She was
unaware of sex but soon found out: A Western pedophile purchased her virginity,
she said, and the brothel tied her naked and spread-eagled on a bed so that he
could rape her. </P>
<P>“I was so scared,” she recalled. “I was crying and asking, ‘Why are you doing
this to me?’ ” </P>
<P>After that, the girl was in huge demand because she was so young. Some 20
customers raped her nightly, she remembers. And the brothel twice stitched her
vagina closed so that she could be resold as a virgin. This agonizingly painful
practice is common in Asian brothels, where customers sometimes pay hundreds of
dollars to rape a virgin. </P>
<P>Most girls who have been trafficked, whether in New York or in Cambodia,
eventually surrender. They are degraded and terrified, and they doubt their
families or society will accept them again. But somehow Srey Pov refused to give
in. </P>
<P>Repeatedly, she tried to escape the brothel but she said that each time she
was caught and brutally punished with beatings and electric shocks. The brothel,
like many in Cambodia, also had a punishment cell to break the will of
rebellious girls. </P>
<P>As Srey Pov remembers it (and other girls tell similar stories), each time
she rebelled she was locked naked in the darkness in a barrel half-full of
sewage, replete with vermin and scorpions that stung her regularly. I asked how
long she was punished this way, thinking perhaps an hour or two. </P>
<P>“The longest?” she remembered. “It was a week.” </P>
<P>Customers are, of course, the reason trafficking continues, and many of them
honestly think that the girls are in the brothels voluntarily. Many are, of
course. But smiles are not always what they seem. Srey Pov even remembers
flirting to avoid being beaten. </P>
<P>“We smile on the outside,” she said, “but inside we are crying.” </P>
<P>Yet this is a story with a triumphant ending. At age 9, Srey Pov was able to
dart away from the brothel and outrun the guard. She found her way to a shelter
run by Somaly Mam, an anti-trafficking activist who herself was prostituted as a
child. Somaly now runs the <A href="http://www.somaly.org/">Somaly Mam
Foundation</A> to fight human trafficking in Southeast Asia: She’s the one who
led the brothel raid that I recounted <A title="The column"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/kristof-fighting-back-one-brothel-raid-at-a-time.html">in
my last column</A>. </P>
<P>In Somaly’s shelter, Srey Pov learned English and blossomed. Now 19, Srey Pov
can even imagine eventually having a boyfriend. </P>
<P>“Before I didn’t like men because they hit me and raped me,” she reflected.
“But now I think that not all men are bad. If I find a good man, I can marry
him.” </P>
<P>Somaly is creating an army of young women like Srey Pov who have been rescued
from the brothels: well-educated and determined to defeat human trafficking.
Over the years, I’ve watched these women and girls make a difference, and
they’re self-replicating. </P>
<P>In my last column, I described a frightened seventh-grade Vietnamese girl who
was rescued in a brothel raid that Somaly and I participated in. That raid in
the town of Anlong Veng has already had an impact, for six more brothels in the
area have closed because of public attention and fear that they could be next.
And the seventh-grade girl is recovering from her trauma at a shelter run by
Somaly, where a girl named Lithiya has taken her under her wing. </P>
<P>Lithiya, now 15, is one of my favorites in “Somaly’s army,” perhaps because
she wants to be a journalist and has taught herself astoundingly good English.
Trafficked at age 9 from Vietnam, Lithiya was locked inside a brothel for years
before she climbed over a wall and escaped. Now a ninth grader, she is ranked
No. 1 in her class. </P>
<P>Srey Pov, Lithiya and Somaly encountered a form of oppression that echoes
19th-century slavery. But the scale is larger today. By my calculations, at
least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as
African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. </P>
<P>So for those of you doubtful that “modern slavery” really is an issue for the
new international agenda, think of Srey Pov — and multiply her by millions. If
what such girls experience isn’t slavery, that word has no meaning. It’s time
for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S. and around the world.
</P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>__________________________________</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Verdana>Wayne A. Fox<BR><A
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