Mom (26): "I have 6 siblings, 3 brothers and 3 sisters. My father has passed away. Two younger brothers are living with my mother in Memot in the Cambodian countryside. I moved to the capital of Phnom Penh to stay with my aunt and earn some money. While I was selling sugar cane juice on the streets, a well-built woman approached me and asked if I knew anyone who wanted to go to Malaysia.

”What do you mean by going to Malaysia?” I asked curiously.

”To work in a garment factory where you will be able to make very good wages.” she replied.

”How would I get there?” I questioned, thinking to myself that this is to good to be true.

” You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, smiling pleasantly, ”if you want to go, I can get a passport done for you.”

And that is where this story starts. Like so many other young girls, Mom never made it to the garment factory as the women had promised but was sold instead to a brothel in Kuala Lumpur. Once the money was exchanged, her new owner took away her passport and confined her to the house. She could not speak or understand a word of Malay and so she had to perform helplessly the duties she was assigned. They told her that if the police caught her without her passport she would go to prison and so she dared not to even attempt an escape.

Day after day Mom lived under these conditions, not knowing if she would ever again be free to live her life as she desired, hoping something would happen to take her out of her confinement but having nothing to base those hopes on. Finally, after one year had passed, the Malaysian Police Force rescued her in a raid and after a brief detainment she was brought back to Cambodia – as a so-called ”trafficking victim”.

The United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime defines trafficking in persons as: "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation..."(Article 3, November 2000)

COM.PASSION filmmaker Nico Mesterharm and French photographer Nicolas Lainez, who are collaborating in the making of a documentary about forced prostitution, entitled SOLD OUT, first met Mom in one of Phnom Penh’s numerous shelters for so-called ‘trafficked women’. With the help of the aid organisation CWCC (Cambodian Women Crisis Center), Chantha is now trained to become a hairdresser, starting a new life in a small beauty saloon in Phnom Penh.

Chantha: "I have wanted to learn this skill since I was a little girl, but I never had any money. Now I am staying in a small room next to the saloon with another girl who has had very similar experiences as myself. During the first few days after my arrival I would think about my past and want to cry, but now I feel alright..."

"Cambodia has become a trafficking hot spot in South-East-Asia." says Ung Chanthol, in her COM.PASSION interview. She is the founder of CWCC and was awarded for her work with the Ramon-Magsasay-Award for Advanced Leadership. "This is caused by poverty, which forces many people into looking for jobs. When they hear about working possibilities, may that be in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia or Japan, they go immediately, without considering the problems. Sometimes they do not even know the persons who promised them those jobs.

Women are sold because they lack information. I think the most important factor is to disseminate general information about trafficking and the deceptive tricks used by the offenders, mostly in rural areas. Most women who are trafficked are illiterate however and cannot read newspapers or articles about trafficking. We must educate people in the rural areas by means of radio and TV. Where media is not accessible we have to produce video programs and play them in such communities.”

Trafficking in women and girls is increasingly being linked to the spread of HIV/AIDS. This link has important consequences for individual and public health. Forced into commercial sex work, women who are trafficked are at high risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases, which increase the risk for contracting HIV. Also, they are often subject to violent or dangerous sex practices that allow the virus to more easily enter the body.

A report from the COMMITTEE ON WOMEN, POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT stated in the year of 2002: "HIV/AIDS is both a stark disease burden and also a biomarker of the gendered condition of women and of male sexual consumption. The highest rates in the world today exist in centers of sex tourism, in the military, and in societies and subcultures that condone male sexual exploitation, male sexual promiscuity, and female subordination. When the landscapes of sexual politics are further driven by economic collapse and conflict we see - as in Africa, South and East Asia, and the states of the former Soviet Union – the rise of trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and the emergence of new and the re-emergence of 'old' sexually transmitted diseases.”

It was quite a surprise than that trafficking was not seen as a big issue for the 15th World AIDS Conference in Bangkok 2004. UNESCO Bangkok did bring this issue to light when it held a satellite meeting, where David Feingold`s documentary TRADING WOMEN was shown. Narrated by Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie, the film investigates the trade in minority girls and women from the hill tribes of Burma, Laos, and China, for the Thai sex industry. The film dispels common beliefs about the sex trade, such as: "The problem is the parents; it's part of their culture to sell their daughters." and, "The sex trade exists because of Western sex tours." or "They sell their girls for TVs." Filmmaker David Feingold: "We take the audience behind the tourist tales and stereotyped news coverage that reveal the reality behind the myths. We show how much of what the audience thinks they know about the issue is much more complex than they imagined."

The Spanish photographer Nicolas Lainez knows about this complexity quite well. He has, for the past six years, been following with his camera, the paths of girls and women who have been sold to brothels. The intensity of his black and white photos on trafficking and prostitution in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and India have won him several awards. He has also published books, with the French media house FNAC, and exhibits his work worldwide, preferring airports and other public buildings where International travelers or might-be ‘sex tourists’ will have opportunity to be impacted by his work.

Lainez was also a key speaker at Goethe Institute for the COM.PASSION Project in Bangkok, along with Nico Mesterharm, the Australian film maker Ian White (MOUTH TO MOUTH: SEX WORKERS IN PHNOM PENH), Aarti Kapor of Action for Women in Distressing Situations (Phnom Penh), Frederic Thomas from AIDetous (Phnom Penh(, Lin Chew of Global Alliance against Traffic in Women (Bangkok) and Usa Lerdsrisuntad of Foundation for Women (Bangkok). Questions and topics discussed at this conference included:

1. What does it take to identify the victims?
2. How is the trafficking network structured?
3. Should SE Asian countries open or close their borders?
4. Should prostitution be legalized or prosecuted?
5. How can prevention programs work in the region?
6. How do the different NGOs and governments deal with the problem?

In the year 2002, Nicolas Lainez and filmmaker Nico Mesterharm met in Phnom Penh, while Mesterharm was filming for the European Cultural Channel ‘ARTE’ the documentary AIDS IN CAMBODIA: BATTLE FOR LIFE. They agreed to join forces for the unique multimedia-project SOLD OUT!, which will include a TV documentary, a book, and a photo exhibition – based on data and sources such as the following:

The Cambodian Child Labor Survey of 2001 estimated that there were 2.3 million children, ages five to seventeen, who were working in the workforce. Of that number 37,000 of them were working away from home.
UNICEF in 2002 estimated that one third of all sex workers in Cambodia were under the age of 18. About 14,000 sex workers in Cambodia were forced or tricked into the business. Other young girls turn to the sex industry as they have few viable alternatives.

NPRS in December of 2002 stated that a projected one million young Cambodians would join the workforce in the next few years. Unless sufficient jobs are provided many job seekers may be at risk of being trafficked into the sex trade while seeking irregular work in Thailand. The ILO/IPEC/TICW Social Annex pointed out that labor migration and related trafficking were the results of a variety of factors, but stem primarily from extreme poverty, the continued aftermath of conflict including the presence of landmines (which reduce the usability of land for agriculture) and limited employment opportunities. By 1996, one third of the population had changed residence and the vast majority of present inhabitants of Phnom Penh were not born there. Although human trafficking and labor migration involve largely internal movements of people in Cambodia, there is also a sizable flow of individuals across borders. Thailand is the primary destination for outbound passage. Inbound flows are mainly from Vietnam.
UNICEF stated that Vietnamese girls are trafficked into sexual exploitation in Cambodia, where they are in high demand for their 'prized' fairer skin and alleged sexual 'daring'.

Within his Cambodian work Nicolas Lainez has focused mainly on the Vietnamese victims, taking photos for instance at the village of Svay Pak (or KM11) outside of Phnom Penh, where up to 3000 girls made a living from sex work before its closure in 2004. Lainez: "Those girls are commonly sold into bonded situations in brothels to pay off debts incurred by their parents. The high incidence of HIV/AIDS is lowering the age of women and girls becoming sex workers. This occurs not only because AIDS is decimating the local sex worker population but also because myths about the curative power of youth (especially virgins) are increasing demand for younger girls. A number of Vietnamese children and women are also trafficked to Thailand via Cambodia."

This raises extra challenges for Thai authorities when attempting to track relatives and repatriate victims, especially children. The border town of Poipet is a sending, transition and receiving epicenter for trafficking. While women and children are sold to brothel owners for as little as 50 USD, virgins are sold for up to 800 USD which corresponds to three times the annual GDP per capita in Cambodia (UNICEF).

Since the beginning of 2004 the COM.PASSION broadcasting team, led by director Nicolaus Mesterharm and cameraman Lach Chantha, has been investigating the trafficking situation with the help of several NGOs like AFESIP, COSECAM, CWCC, the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Women’s and Veterans Affairs and law enforcement advisor Christian Guth. They have already taken an in-depth-look at the various programs that are offered to ‘rescued’ girls (sheltering, counseling, vocational training) and also the loopholes in the legal system, which encourage traffickers.

Ung Chanthol (CWCC): "Only about 7% of the human traffickers are punished. To improve the law system in Cambodia it is necessary to amend the existing law to cover all forms of trafficking; for working as prostitutes, domestic servants, beggars, fishing or construction workers or to become brides... The government should allocate an additional budget for investigation work on trafficking and for training the judges and police forces to gain more knowledge about trafficking. We see that sometimes court officials do not understand the problems of women by asking questions such as ”You are so young. Why do you want to be a prostitute?” In fact, this girl filed the complaint because she was deceived and sold..."

For sure Mom never wanted to be a prostitute. But will she be happy as a hairdresser? Is she able to get along with the small amount of money she will earn in the future? Can she find a husband who will take care of her? Will she forget what has happened to her?  After the COM.PASSION interview she cried and added the following: "In my opinion, the traffickers are not human beings; they are animals. If they were human beings, as women, they should not have treated us like this. I want to ask them: How would you feel if your daughter was sold? Now I want to advise all the young girls: If anyone uses sweet talk in order to persuade you to go abroad, do not trust this person, because those who use sweet talk are never good to us. They will sell you like they sold me..."

For more informations and fotos click on the links. Please feel free to contact the project makers directly if you like to help. Every effort is needed! If you want to present a project to us please write to us. COM.PASSION wants to set up a network for children`s associations because we know that a strong alliance is needed to curb the disease. Thank you all!