Along with beauty, however, comes pain sometimes. The more I travel the more I see the darkness and the pain in the world. We were able to meet Sarah, a young woman from New York who works with Agape International Missons. She works to get children out of situations where they are in harsh work environments or sex trafficked.
Many children and families become indebted to factories and are forced to work there. Some families sell their children to get out of debt or sometimes to even buy furniture. The reasons are various and the practice is normal.
The street on which Agape is located is a very well known area of Phnom Penh and it is not for tourism. The street and city is known because it is the place where predators come to buy children or visit brothels. The brothels on this particular street have since been shut down thanks to God’s work through Agape, but men still show up to purchase children.
At the end of the month we took a tour of Agape. We were not allowed to take pictures, but the memories will forever be there. We visited a home for children that used to be filled with horrors and every child’s nightmare because it was once a brothel. Each child was put in a room with a door and bed. Virgins were sold at top dollar and held in a special room on the second floor.
When the SWAT team raided the brothel to shut it down one girl was found dead in her room. While the building which was once dank and dark with a single hallway lined with rooms on either side is now one big open space lined with beds for children one room remains in memorial to the little girl whose body was found on the day of the raid.
Brothels like this and other forms of human trafficking exist all over Cambodia and even throughout the world. Even in the United States of America. However, in Cambodia, and many other Asian countries, human trafficking rises when factories go up. They become hot spots for women and children to be captured, kidnapped, and sold.
Cambodia sufferred a detrimental genocide in the seventies in which the U.S. provided weapons for The Khmer Rouge and later recognizing their fatal mistake. The Khmer Rouge, a communist party, came into power and persecuted around two million people including international people. They wiped out doctors, lawyers, teachers, college students, and all other forms of educated people.
People were forced to work in the fields day in and day out. Families were torn apart. People had very little to no food and began to catch and eat anything that moved. This includes dog meat, tarantulas, rain bugs, and many other things that are now considered every day food or a delicacy.
The Khmer people of Cambodia have since lived in a state of fear. There are very few people over the age of sixty. The generation after that mostly consists of people who were once child soldiers for the Khmer rouge and grew up to be adults without any moral standards. Their children are not child soldiers but they know not love.
The upcoming generation has a desire for something more and are most likely the ones to come to know Christ. There is very much still a very strong sense of fear of being educated. When one is educated they become a target whether by higher officials or their fellow peers.
Jobs are very far and few between. The leaders of the country desire to keep the poor poor and the rich rich. The best paying jobs lie within the factories which are popping up in more and more cities and industrializing the country more and more each year. Factories are not only a problem because they bring human trafficking on the rise but because of the work conditions and wages.
My anger spiked during my time in Cambodia as I spoke to one of the English teachers we worked with. Her name is Rothana. She is in her early twenties and has to work in a factory to provide for her family.
One day I decided to ask about her job. The building is not air conditioned. It is very hot. Workers have to stand the entire time they are there. They do not have breaks. They work anywhere between twelve and sixteen hours a day.
You may think this is a great work opportunity where they can make a ton of money with an hourly wage. That is not at all the case. They make $8 per day. Per day not per hour. If they worked every single day of the year, no holidays, their earnings for the year would be $2,912.
I asked Rothana what they make at the factory where she works and she said jeans. I asked if there was a certain brand. The factory where Rothana works makes Old Navy jeans. These jeans are sold usually at a minimum of $30 per pair yet the people who make hundreds of pairs a day only get paid $8 for the entire day.
American companies contract out to other companies to have their products made to save on labor wages because there is no way they could pay a person only $8 a day for a minimum of twelve hours of work in a sweat shop with no chair and no break.
Are you starting to see why Fair Trade items and products made in the USA are becoming such a big deal? It is because more people are finally fighting against the injustice and the poverty in the world.
These factories that make your Polo shirts, Banana Republic and Old Navy jeans, and countless other items are keeping people in poverty by not providing proper wages, benefits, or work environments. They are unsafe and have become the central hub for human trafficking.
Rothana was not the only young woman I met who went to the factories to work and provide for her family. These young women became our friends. We shared with them. Ate with them. Prayed with them. Yet these very women are working in the factories and more and more factories are popping up around them. As those factories arrive so will the human trafficking.
I was sickened at the realization that it would be possible for one of the girls I met to be kidnapped during a shift at work in the factory and forced into prostitution.
Agape International Missions in Cambodia not only works to shut down brothels, but they work to restore and rebuild communities. The street where Agape resides is now home to safe work environments and decent wages along with benefits.
They work to get women out of prostitution and provide them with housing, counseling, transitioning, and jobs after. They operate a school and make available English classes to students, workers, and others in the community. They have a gym on this street that teaches discipline through Muay Thai boxing to young men. These classes begin with a devotional.
Agape realized by shutting down brothels they shut down income for the people and have made ways to provide so that human trafficking will no longer be apart of that community. When they see a need or an area of improvement they make a way for it to happen.
Human trafficking is real. These factories are real. Child brothels are real. They may seem so far away but they are a reality and a true pain in our world. It is not something that is only on the other side of the world but in your own country. It is everywhere. It is in Dallas, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, Seattle, Washington, and even Washington D.C. It is in your backyard. Do not think something like this could not happen where you live because I guarantee it is happening.
Become aware and become active in fighting against human slavery today. Slavery is wearing different masks today than it did a century ago and the sex trade is one of those many masks. Help destroy it.
If you would like to learn more about Agape International Missions please click the link below. There is also a documentary called “The Pink Room” which features the child brothel I mentioned before and the world of human trafficking.
There are many organizations in the U.S. who are fighting against human trafficking today. Support or become involved today. If you have no finances or time to give I earnestly ask you to pray for the end of this form of slavery.
www.agapewebsite.org
