[The Lizard of Oz]

I was surprised and heartened to see the NY Times, which harbors the obsessive "sex slave" rescuer and white-knight extraordinaire Nick Kristof, publish this op-ed which lifts some of the veil on the outrageous lies about "sex slavery" and "trafficking" and the price that these lies exact in the countries from which the "sex slaves" are supposed to be rescued.

In brief, some Cambodian woman named Somaly Mam made up extravagant lies about being "trafficked" into prostitution and about widespread trafficking of whores in her country. She was feted by the usual suspects in the US, and her (since then retracted) lies resulted in Cambodia enacting draconian laws which actually harmed brothel whores who had to suffer brutal police raids, and were kidnapped from brothels in supposed "rescue" operations (which were further celebrated by western dupes and do-gooders). All based on egregious and wholly fabricated numbers about the prevalence of "sex slavery" and "trafficking". And this in the supposed "trafficking" capital of Cambodia -- yet people still have the f'ing nerve to tell us that this nonsense is occurring at all times everywhere in the world including the US.

People like Maggie McNeill who have been debunking the "trafficking" hysteria for years must feel some measure of vindication to see these lies exposed at the NY Times of all places. This is a significant occurrence.

link

Quote:

WITH a sensational story of surviving child sex slavery in Cambodia, Somaly Mam became a worldwide icon, the best-selling author of a memoir and the head of a foundation raising millions in the name of saving girls and women from the sex trade, victims she recounted rescuing in dramatic brothel raids. Last year, introducing the State Department’s annual “Trafficking in Persons” report, Secretary of State John Kerry called Ms. Mam “a hero every single day.”

But all this wasn’t true. A Newsweek cover story last week found inconsistencies and flat-out fraud in Ms. Mam’s story of being abducted and forced to work in a brothel as a child — instead, former neighbors said she came to their village with her parents and graduated from high school, later sitting for a teacher’s exam — and in the stories of women she said she had rescued by the thousands. Ms. Mam even said traffickers had kidnapped her teenage daughter — but the girl’s father said she ran away with her boyfriend.

On Wednesday, Somaly Mam resigned from her own foundation.

Quote:

In 2008, Cambodia enacted new prohibitions on commercial sex, after the country was placed on a watch list by the State Department. In brutal raids on brothels and in parks, as reported by the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers in a 2008 documentary, women were chased down, detained and assaulted. The State Department commended Cambodia for its law and removed the country from the watch list.

Human Rights Watch later conducted interviews with 94 sex workers in Cambodia for a 2010 report. “Two days after my arrival, I was caught when I tried to escape,” one woman said. “Five guards beat me up. When I used my arms to shield my face and head from their blows, they beat my arms. The guard threatened to slit our throats if we tried to escape a second time, and said our bodies would be cremated there.”

She was describing a “rescue” and detention at the Prey Speu Social Affairs center near Phnom Penh. Human Rights Watch urged the Cambodian government “to suspend provisions in the 2008 Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation that facilitate police harassment and abuses.”

These are the women whose stories are not told in an anti-trafficking fund-raising pitch. Some of the “victims” whom Ms. Mam said she saved then attempted to escape from her shelters, only to have her claim to the press that they had been “kidnapped.” She later apologized for a 2012 speech before the United Nations General Assembly in which she asserted that the Cambodian Army had killed eight girls after a raid on her shelters.