LTO Cambodia: When safe sex isn’t

Saturday, March 31, 2012

When safe sex isn’t

According to Cambodia Daily reports of recent prostitution busts in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian police are using the presence/possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution and as a basis for arresting the people involved.* For example, in ‘Police Raid Parlor Alleged to Provide Sex Services’ (Cambodia Daily, March 14, 2012,) police reportedly stated that, in addition to other evidence, “…used condoms showed the massage place is 100% providing sex services.” The women from that bust were taken by the police for “education” (i.e. possibly sent to one of Cambodia’s notorious ‘rehabilitation centers’) and the parlor owners were arrested.

While I understand, from a law enforcement perspective, why the police would want to use condoms as evidence, this practice clearly runs contrary to this interests of community health and the health and safety of individuals involved in the sex trade. It creates a situation in which sex workers and brothel owners must choose between possessing condoms/risking arrest and eschewing condoms/risking sexual disease. It makes safe sex unsafe (at least legally) and incentivizes sex workers to forgo condoms.

This is particularly frustrating in light of Cambodia’s hard-fought battle against high HIV infection rates. Due in part to efforts by NGOs and government to encourage condom use amongst sex workers, the country’s comparatively high HIV rates have been significantly reduced over the last decade. While the recent crackdown on brothels has negatively impacted this effort in several ways, it has been largely indirect, e.g. forcing prostitutes out of brothels and onto the streets has made them less accessible to the NGOs that provide condoms and safe sex education, and also made them more vulnerable to customer pressure not use condoms.

The practice of using condoms as criminal evidence represents a much more present and direct threat to condom use and safe sex. It amounts to the de facto criminalization of condoms, actively discouraging condom use amongst sex workers. In terms of community health, it is a step backwards, working to undo efforts to reduce the spread of HIV and STDs. And in so far as the anti-trafficking/prostitution laws are intended to protect the women involved, it acts to the contrary, putting their health and safety at greater risk.

Time to end this practice.

---------------------------------------

(* Cambodia is not alone in this practice. 'The Policy That Keeps Prostitutes From Carrying and Using Condoms' addresses a similar policy in New York.)

See also:
Cambodia: Sex workers, 100% condom use and human rights
Off the Streets: Arbitrary Detention and Other Abuses against Sex Workers in Cambodia
Cambodia HIV and Aids treatment programmes threatened
AIDS on Stamps

2 comments:

Stephen WoodApril 1, 2012 at 1:21 PM
They are right that this is a good basis for charging someone as a prostitute, but they are terrible wrong if they think it will lower the amount of prostitution happening in Phnom Penh. Almost certainly this will lead to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases and a more unsafe environment for these women.

The NYT just reported yesterday that this type of dragnet are a failure.
ReplyDelete
Replies
Khmer musicMay 18, 2012 at 1:27 AM
Although extreme poverty and the lack of law enforcement are mainly to blame for child sex trafficking in Cambodia, I think the Cambodian people's casual attitudes toward sexual predation also contribute to the problem. Cambodians generally look up to foreigners, especially Westerners, as wealthy and benevolent. It's unfortunate that some foreigners are in the country to take advantage of children.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.