Xiao Zhang (pseudonym) is a person who loves to travel and loves to make friends. During his holiday a few years ago, on the recommendation of a friend, he came to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in human history.
It was a rewarding trip, and when he was about to leave for home, his friend mysteriously said that he would take him to a fun place, but he kept the specific itinerary secret, repeatedly stressing that "when you get to the place, you don't want to go home." ”
With a doubtful mood, Xiao Zhang followed his friend to a residential area not far from the tourist attraction. As soon as he arrived here, Xiao Zhang felt depressed, because in front of most of the houses, there was a woman in revealing clothes standing in front of the door, laughing at Xiao Zhang and his friends.
After realizing what his friend wanted to do with him, Xiao Zhang intended to go back, after all, he was very resistant to this kind of thing. As a result, the friend was reluctant and dragged Xiao Zhang over hard, and a woman pulled Xiao Zhang into the door with a smile.
"In this way, I should give you a lot of money, and you will sit down and talk to me, and I will leave when my friends come back."
The woman sneered, holding a cigarette in her hand, fiddling with the lighter, squinting her eyes at Xiao Zhang: "What do you want to hear?" ”
"Tell me your story! Why do you want to do this? ”
The woman did not speak, smoking a cigarette and staring at the window, her eyes dim and dull, and she slowly opened her mouth in the middle of the night.
A past that cannot be looked back on
"You can just call me Song Shuang, that's the name I gave myself Chinese."
Song Shuang lowered his head, silently extinguished the cigarette that had been burned to the end, and threw it into the ashtray. This is a story she does not want to recall, but she does not know why, after seeing Xiao Zhang, she would like to say it.
Song Shuang's father was a gambler, and almost from the time she had a memory, her parents were often noisy over gambling. Even though she was so frightened that she cried, no one came over to coax her.
A little older, the younger brother was born. She rarely saw her father at home, but she still didn't want to see him at home. Because Song Shuang's mother told her that his father would only return home to ask for money after he had spent all the money.
With a gambling-addicted father, Song Shuang had to take care of the housework at a young age so that his mother, who had returned from hard work, could have a moment of rest.
In Cambodia, situations like the Song Shuangjia family are very common, and the poorer the family, the more addictive the man is to gambling. They feel that they may not be able to earn more than going to the casino to work hard all their lives.
Men no longer focus their efforts on work and improving the family environment, but instead expect to get rich overnight and easily improve their quality of life.
Wives have to take care of their families while doing odd jobs to support their families, but most of these meager salaries are also stolen by their husbands and squandered in casinos.
Even in Cambodia, many wives are accustomed to their husbands not coming home and looking forward to being in the casino for a long time. It can even be said that sometimes they don't expect their husbands to come back. Because every time she came home, she would rummage through the boxes and cabinets at home to find the money she had secretly hidden, and once she found out, it would be a punch and kick to his wife and children.
Recalling this, Song Shuang's gaze gradually became sluggish, without any radiance, and his mood was unusually calm, and he seemed to have become numb to all this.
Xiao Zhang already felt a little hard to believe that the status of women here was too low. What is the need for such a married life?
Song Shuang glanced at Xiao Zhang, who was full of shock, and then took out a cigarette again and lit it, squinting at the window in a daze. It was a long time before she began to tell the story:
"My nightmare, the day it really began, was when the man (father) came back injured, followed by a few strong men. At that moment, I knew I was finished. Here, too, women can be a bet. The man he didn't have the money to gamble on, so he bet me and my mom and lost us. ”
"How old were you then?"
"Twelve years old."
At this age, he was still in elementary school in China, and was sitting in a classroom with a few clean windows, absorbing the nutrition of knowledge. In Cambodia's slums, girls are sold to brothels by their biological fathers as a bet.
After Song Shuang was sold to a brothel, he was separated from his mother. It was a memory that she could not forget in her heart, and it was a painful scar that constantly burned her spirit.
Song Shuang was a stubborn girl who said she did not want to be a prostitute, so on the first day of being sent to the underground brothel, she was beaten severely.
That beating almost killed her.
Just when she was dying, the brothel people came with a bowl of medicine in their hands, and she thought that the brothel people were worried that she was dead and no one would help them make money, so they gave life-saving medicine.
But after drinking the medicine, she felt more and more wrong, because of her young age, she had no idea what had changed in her body. It wasn't until later that a guest told her what she had drunk.
She cried for a long time, she did not want to live like this, so she looked for a new way to escape. But how could the brothel people not know her mind?
"They knew I could still run, and in addition to beating me and medicating me, they forced me to take drugs."
These ruthless people, dealing with girls like Song Shuang, will use drugs to tie them up firmly. Drugs are an evil thing, and once they are contaminated, it is difficult to quit.
Even if the brothel people do not restrict their freedom, when the drugs are committed, the painful sense of ant-walking will make her worse off than dead, and eventually return to the brothel, just to be able to take a few bites of drugs and alleviate the strong discomfort.
From the moment she became contaminated with drugs, the girl could no longer jump out of the fire pit.
Cambodia's industry
"Isn't the government in charge?"
Xiao Zhang, who was filled with righteous indignation, clenched his fists, was very annoyed, and could not imagine that in the 21st century, there were still countries in the world with such a terrible and dark side.
"Why don't you just call the police and be taken to a drug rehab facility?" After all, drugs are very harmful to the body, and the resistance of the body will decline when you often take drugs, and you will also be contaminated with many diseases. ”
Hearing these words, Song Shuang laughed loudly, with strong ridicule and helplessness in the laughter.
"Alarm? The cops would only send me back to the brothel and have the boss beat me up, pin me into the coffin, and let bugs in and bite me. ”
Xiao Zhang looked at Song Shuang in shock, and the story she told next made Xiao Zhang feel creepy even more.
Cambodia's underclass, especially girls, live like hell every day.
As a small country in Southeast Asia, in fact, Cambodia's tourism resources are relatively rich, not only Angkor Wat, but also a lot of tropical scenery.
The reason why the world has been left behind for so many years is because the industrial resources here are relatively scarce, so it failed to catch up during the industrial revolution, and later developed and lacked stamina, which eventually led to a stagnation in economic development.
At this time, some confusing operations of the government completely threw the burden of the state to the people at the bottom.
The United States has conducted an investigation into more than 100 traffickers convicted in Cambodia every year. And they are only the data put on the surface of the government, and the dark transactions and human flesh trading in the back are innumerable.
These people have an organization and background, forming a complete industrial chain. Many traffickers go to the countryside to abduct and sell young girls, and some children are forced to become prostitutes in underground brothels before they are ten years old.
There is also an outrageous fact about the porn industry here, which is that they insist that having sex with a virgin can bring good luck to their lives and improve their health, so the local market for young prostitutes is very large.
As a result, traffickers have to abduct and sell more young girls as prostitutes, thus obtaining high profits and rewards, and a vicious circle has formed.
Human trafficking leads to the formation of a market for young prostitutes and will gradually expand because of the problem of human trafficking, and the existence and demand of this market have soared, allowing traffickers to see the huge market potential and exacerbating the phenomenon of human trafficking.
But there is also a question here, is the government unaware of such rampant human trafficking and the yellow industry?
Of course not, because the government is the source of evil and the culprit of these things.
Cambodian law certainly does not explicitly state that human trafficking is possible in the country, let alone the rationality of the existence of underground brothels.
But the government also did not make efforts to rectify it, and even acquiesced to the existence of all this.
There is a joke that all the ways to make money are written in the Criminal Code. This joke is really too appropriate for Cambodia today.
Behind these obscure industries, the real controllers are government officials, who have changed their identities and become shareholders with considerable dividends.
If you really meet a law enforcer, you can basically settle it with money, and no one will go to jail.
In other words, these dark industries in Cambodia, as long as they do not annoy a high-ranking official and are deliberately retaliated against, basically there will be no problems, let alone arrest.
In such a dark social context, once the girl is dragged into the magic cave, there will never be a day to turn over.
Three views of young people with problems
Because the pornography industry here has formed a complete industrial chain, many men from other countries will fly here specifically to find pornography services, which has also become a recognized fact.
This situation has stimulated a surge in local human trafficking cases, and the slightest carelessness may lead to being dragged into a magic cave.
However, not all of the women in these underground brothels were trafficked, and many of them joined voluntarily.
The Cambodian countryside is particularly poor and far beyond our imagination. In stark contrast to the poverty and hardship of the people at the bottom, it is the absurdity of the people of the upper class.
Against such an unfair background, the thinking of some country girls has also changed.
They volunteer to become prostitutes simply because they work hard for a lifetime in other jobs and may not earn as much as being prostitutes for a month. Of course, many of them also have sales, that is, sold by their parents to underground brothels, in order to improve the financial situation of the family.
Foreign tourists with a gambling addiction
If you ask Cambodia whether gambling is banned in this country, the answer is yes and yes.
Officially, residents of the country are not allowed to participate in gambling, but at the same time explicitly recognize the legality of foreigners gambling here.
A single statistic is a very clear and concise picture of how dire the gambling situation in Cambodia is, as of 2014, there were 3,000 legal casinos that were publicly recognized by the state alone, and there were countless underground casinos that were not counted.
A small country with a land area of only 180,000 square kilometers, the actual area is not as large as the mainland Hebei Province, but there are such a huge number of casinos, which shows how popular the gambling atmosphere is in the country.
Why should Cambodia allow foreigners to participate in gambling?
The answer is because of poverty, in order to develop the economy and improve the level of foreign exchange, gambling is a low-cost, and the time to see the results is short, and the effect is remarkable.
In fact, this has indeed greatly improved the prosperity of surrounding industries to a certain extent, but behind the seemingly prosperous and upward development of the economy, there are huge social security risks.
Foreigners come here to gamble, which means that there are native people involved in the gambling industry, and slowly a large number of locals participate in gambling.
People who gamble are polarized, or particularly rich, are looking for excitement here.
Or just like Song Shuang's father, because he is extremely poor, he does not want to change his life through hard work, and he dreams of getting rich overnight.
Therefore, the person who is really harmed by gambling is the latter. They often lose their homes, and losing nine times has led to a growing desire to flip the market, betting their wives and daughters on gambling and allowing creditors to sell their loved ones into brothels.
The saddest thing is that these people are not aware of their animal behavior at all.
Therefore, the idea of the Cambodian government trying to use gambling to improve its own economy is extremely absurd.
Because this makes many people want to find a shortcut to riches, but in fact they are on a completely wrong and no turning back.
Many boys from many families drop out of school early because they are too poor. The casino's relatively high salaries and many jobs have become the first choice for many people looking for jobs.
These children, who have not yet fully established the three views, in such an environment, have also contracted the vicious habit of gambling early, and even if they become a family in the future, they will be a gambler and a drag on the family.
A paradise for addicts
As long as one of these three exists, there must be two other people accompanying them.
In Cambodia, the drug trade is also quite rampant.
The geographical location here is very special, first of all, close to the Golden Triangle, the world's largest source of drugs, and secondly, close to the Strait of Malacca, the unique geographical location makes it the preferred trading place for drug traffickers.
Like the first two, although the government stipulates that drugs cannot be used, it is actually just a piece of paper. It is precisely because of the inaction of these people that the mainland anti-narcotics police will pay such a big price to block the flow of drugs from the border to the interior.
According to the survey, there are more than a thousand drug-related entertainment venues in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia alone.
What's there specifically here?
Guests who come here can not only find prostitutes. These poor women are clearly priced in entertainment venues such as KTVs and bars, waiting for guests to choose.
In addition to normal entertainment, guests can look for pornography while also participating in gambling and getting together for drugs.
There is a very absurd phenomenon in Cambodia that almost every household in the countryside grows poppies because it is more valuable than grain.
When many families reach the age of age, girls either marry or go to work as prostitutes.
The family conditions of the former are quite OK, and they can eat and drink as a family. But as long as the family is poor, the fate of the girl is basically doomed from the moment of birth.
Under the pressure of this deformity, many girls have formed the wrong concept: instead of being beaten and scolded by the owner of the brothel, rather than being sold to a trafficker by their parents, it is better to be voluntary, and to suffer less and get more money.
Therefore, a girl like Song Shuang will not feel inferior because she is a prostitute, and she will not be afraid of others finding out her identity when she walks on the street.
This is a capitalist country, a very poor country, and a country where the government has issued a lot of absurd policies, and the superposition of the three factors has made the social situation here deteriorate more and more, and people's three views have gradually distorted.
Children who drop out of school early and work at home in such places have been tainted with vices over time. Those children who have completed their education normally are not immune to it.
Because the general environment of society is like this, this is a fact that people are powerless to change.
Many foreign men come here to travel, stay for only a week, get infected with these vices, and even after returning to their own country, they are fascinated by Cambodia and look forward to the next time.
Today's Cambodia is full of holes, and if it does not change, it will eventually destroy the dike of thousands of miles in the ant nest.
What does the future hold?
Cambodia's poverty actually has a lot to do with their government.
If we want to change poverty, we must develop the level of industry and science and technology, improve the level of local education, and thus realize the talent dividend, only in this way can the people live in peace and contentment.
But the Cambodian government wants to cut shortcuts, and the so-called shortcut is to push it into the abyss of disaster. This is a capitalist country, where everyone pursues money as the supreme pursuit, and even flesh and blood affection cannot withstand it.
There are many girls like Song Shuang, and they were all born in a family with no human touch. How can a country that does not know how to unite and work together to prosper usher in the spring of development?
Therefore, the best way for Cambodia now is to restrain the horse from the cliff and crack down on pornography, gambling and drugs. Although the ideological concepts of this generation have been difficult to change, if we persist in twenty years of reform, the ideas and three views of the next generation will be established, and a new life will be ushered in.