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At the beginning of the year, a "Cambodian blood slave incident" that flooded the short video platform attracted a lot of attention on the whole network.
Fraud, detention, violent beatings, and finally forced multiple blood draws, becoming "blood slaves", looking at the dying compatriots in the video, netizens were angry and left messages hoping to give an explanation.
Cambodian Blood Slavery Incident
When the official conclusion of "all made up" was issued, the doubts on the Internet still did not stop, and the first feeling that surged up for Cambodia, a border country that only heard of its name, was danger and chaos, so it seemed that cruel and unimaginable things were happening there.
Why is it that a country that used to be an ancient civilization in Southeast Asia now gives people a stereotype of "criminal paradise", is this just the prejudice of netizens?
Of course not.
In the seemingly beautiful and prosperous modern city of Cambodia, countless people have used painful blood and tears to reveal to the world the unbearable darkness of the country covered under the surface of peace and the "yellow gambling and drugs" are rampant, and the "blood slave incident" is only the tip of the iceberg.
Cambodia
Some people say that Cambodia is a paradise for white people and a hell for women.
What the hell is going on here? Why is Cambodia a "crime paradise"? To what extent is pornography, gambling and drugs rampant there?
The purgatory woman who is clearly priced
As dusk falls, the civilized atmosphere that flows in the daytime in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fades little by little, and the desire to be covered up and restrained begins to spread in the bright night.
The neon lights of the city flicker, and the female figures hidden in the dark during the day have taken to the streets, looking for guests for tomorrow's meal money in the dim lights.
Phnom Penh
They dressed coolly, always habitually raised a slightly provocative smile to the men who came to inquire, and after everything was negotiated, they immediately took the man's hand intimately and walked towards the door, the strong smell of fat powder spread on the tip of the nose, and the man who wanted to indulge his desires wantonly ignored the emptiness in his eyes under the face of heavy makeup.
"When I was 12 years old, my mother sold my virginity."
"I did this just to survive."
This is a young girl interviewed by the CNN documentary "Cambodia Daily", although she is still young, but there is no trace of innocence in her eyes.
She was a child prostitute, a girl sold by her mother to pay off loan sharks, who was only 12 years old when her virginity was taken away, and bought by a man in his fifties.
Image from the Internet
Since then, the girl's life has completely gone to the abyss, and no one knows how she survived that nightmare at a young age, only one thing is certain: she has no future.
The girl who has just returned home from the magic cave, but under the persecution and survival threat of her mother, she has to take the initiative to enter a brothel and start to make a living, a girl like her who was ruined by the "virgin trade", this place in Cambodia, everywhere.
The "virgin trade" is the most typical existence in Cambodia, a country where illegal sex trafficking is rampant, especially girls born in the surrounding fishing villages before 2005, who were treated as commodities by their parents at the age of six to thirteen or four, sold to brothels at a clear price, and since then they have gone farther and farther on this road of no return, and can no longer get out.
While other children of the same age sit in bright classrooms reading and writing, playing and playing with their friends.
Image from the Internet
These girls, abandoned on the margins of society, are numbly subjected to the cruelty of men in the contempt of the world, and most of these guests are about the same age as their fathers.
In addition to these children whose parents have ruined their future, there are also many women who are forced into such an abyss because of human traffickers, and there are countless cases of young girls and women who disappear inexplicably every year in Cambodia.
At first, they did not voluntarily live such a day to usher in the sending, but in the face of difficult livelihoods, they gradually took the initiative to become one of them, because there was no way back for a long time, and there were even many girls who entered brothels by themselves in order to survive.
With no education, let alone skills, his family was in huge debt, and eating every day was a problem.
Image from the Internet
In this case, they cannot think about the so-called future, and surviving at this moment is their only thought, and perhaps one day in the future, they will repeat the tragedy of their parents.
The emergence of so many illegal sex trafficking organizations has also attracted a large number of "spring buying tour groups" who come in the name of tourism, and in Cambodia, which is famous for tourism, only about 20% of the men who come to travel every year come solely for sightseeing.
These "sex tourism" groups, mainly European and American white people, most of them about forty or fifty years old, in real life is not satisfactory, so they go to Southeast Asia to buy sex to seek satisfaction, Cambodia has become their preferred country, which shows how widespread the local sex trade has been.
And "gambling" and "poison", which are not separated from "yellow", are also accompanied by such gray places.
Image from the Internet
A country that wanders in the gray zone
While the illegal sex trade attracts many tourists, the desire to be imprisoned for a long time in civilized society is also being released in Cambodia, a country that has always wandered in a gray area.
In the noisy gambling hall, the color "jingles" swayed, everyone's eyes followed the banker's movement, and he immediately threw out the chips in his hand, his eyes were red and stared at the results that were about to be revealed, ecstasy, crying and despair, every night here, many human tragedies would be staged.
This is gambling, and the moment you step into the casino, you are doomed.
Everything of value in you, especially the female members of the family, is forced to become a bargaining chip on this table that can be exchanged at will.
Image from the Internet
"Crack down on illegal gambling, protect legal gambling, and increase state revenue."
In 1995, Cambodia introduced the "Anti-Gambling Law", which explicitly prohibits its nationals from entering and leaving casinos and participating in gambling, but also makes gambling to the front of the stage in a legal capacity, and since then, 200 kilometers away from the capital Phnom Penh, casinos can be established in accordance with the law, and the target group of these casinos is naturally rich tourists who come to play from thousands of miles away.
In the first half of 2022 alone, the gaming industry brought Cambodia about $40 million in revenue, and the profits were staggering, the most typical of which should be the rise of the glorious coastal town of Westport a few years ago.
According to incomplete statistics, Cambodia in 2019, with more than 160 licensed casinos, 91 of which are in Westport, has become a veritable gambling city, but this golden city forcibly pulled up by gambling finally in chaos, never to be as prosperous as it once was.
casino
With huge profit stimulus, it will naturally breed countless dark corners, the prevalence of illegal gambling, so that the already poor people, began to hold the gambler mentality, secretly enter those illegal casinos or betting websites, in a vain attempt to get rich overnight, but eventually owed huge debts, became more and more impoverished.
It also led them to pursue other, higher-reward industries: drugs.
Drug trafficking and drug production, which has formed a very complete industrial chain in Cambodia, the once rampant "Golden Triangle", due to the political turmoil in Myanmar, which is rampant with drugs, coupled with many parties, gradually transferred its own drug factories to Cambodia.
Unlike China's severe crackdown on drug crimes and the establishment of extremely strict punishment laws, Cambodia, which has been in a gray area for a long time, cannot provide a strong deterrent to drug-related people at the legal level.
Golden triangle
There is no death penalty here, and you can apply for commutation and pardon on special holidays every year, so drug lords are more and more favored here, especially Cambodia has developed rapidly in recent years, which also provides the most favorable conditions for drug manufacturing.
Under such circumstances, Cambodia has also become one of the countries in Southeast Asia where drugs are rampant.
The low price and high purity of the drugs produced here have led to a rapid increase in the number of people who go to the local area to buy drugs, and in addition to the foreigners who come under the guise of tourism, Cambodian locals have also become the largest victims of drug erosion.
Those marginalized people who were slowly corrupted by gambling and illegal sex trafficking, in order to eliminate those frustrations and pain, began to seek psychological comfort through drug use, and since then they have fallen deeper and deeper, and many sex workers have chosen to actively contact drugs under the guidance of brothel managers.
Image from the Internet
There are also many minors in remote areas who are prematurely destroyed by drugs and gradually become members of the drug production and trafficking team.
Most of the hard-earned money is filled with drugs and gambling, so that day after day, people's spirit and fighting spirit are consumed one by one, and there is no end in sight, and they can only get by, this is the state of the Cambodian masses at the bottom.
Although the Cambodian government has continuously strengthened the control and crackdown on "pornography, gambling and drugs" over the years, there is still no way to fundamentally reverse this chaotic situation, and the reason for this status quo is inseparable from the historical problems left by Cambodia.
The legacy of history has far-reaching implications
Cambodia is the country with the longest history in Southeast Asia, with a history of more than 2,000 years, and is an ancient civilization.
With a land area of about 181,000 square kilometers, similar to China's Guangdong province, with a total population of more than 16 million, 80% of whom are Khmer, this ancient country is also a troubled country like China.
Location of Cambodia
Since the beginning of the 16th century, Cambodia, which has been deeply invaded by Vietnam and Siam, has constantly fallen into civil strife, the national strength has been continuously depleted, the land area has also shrunk sharply, the people at home have no livelihood, and the people are oppressed, and this chaotic situation has become more and more fierce after becoming a French colony in 1863.
More than 100,000 young adults in Cambodia were forcibly dragged to the European battlefield by France during World War I, and more than one-third of the country was forced to cede to Thailand under French dominance during World War II.
At the same time, during the colonial period, France repeatedly used religion as a pioneer, constantly impacting Cambodia's local national culture, using French as the official language, sending French as school teachers to tell French history, but other geographical and humanistic knowledge about Cambodia itself, but not a word.
Old photos of Cambodian people
Through the erosion of culture, the Cambodian people have a high degree of obedience and respect for the French colonial rule, and at the same time wantonly open various brothels, gambling houses and opium pubs in Cambodia, further eroding the fighting spirit and spirit of the Cambodian people, and seriously corrupting the atmosphere of the entire country.
Therefore, after Cambodia's independence, even if King Sihanouk tried to promote the development of local culture, he could not erase the shadow of decades of French colonial rule.
These remaining problems have not been resolved, and external interference has revived Cambodia's internal war.
In 1970, due to the agitation behind the United States, domestic opposition forces staged a coup d'état, the Khmer Rouge seized power, and then adopted a series of crazy policies, which completely collapsed Cambodia's domestic economy and lost millions of lives.
Phnom Penh in the 70s of the 20th century
The ensuing Vietnamese troops made the already overwhelmed Cambodia even worse, unable to rectify the domestic chaos, and the despair of the people continued to spread, and it was not until the end of 1991 that peace was restored, but Cambodia was already devastated by this time.
This is not only a problem of the country's internal economic development, but also because in the years of war, nearly 10 million landmines have been planted throughout Cambodia, which have not been completely cleared to this day, and people are constantly killed or disabled by sudden detonation of mines at their doorsteps, resulting in extremely poor families.
The combination of war, domestic political chaos and other factors has made life more and more difficult for the people of this weather-torn country.
Today, Cambodia has made many efforts to improve the domestic environment, and the construction of the capital Phnom Penh is getting closer and closer to a modern metropolis.
Cambodian people
In 2016, Cambodia removed the title of the world's least developed country, and everything is moving in a good direction, but it is impossible to ignore the gloom that is hidden under the skin of the bustling city.
Because Cambodia's prices have been soaring, the average national income has grown very slowly, and the gap between the rich and the poor is also increasing, resulting in countless poor people can only choose to take risks.
Because in the absence of ensuring their basic survival needs, any corner of the world will breed many places where the sun cannot shine.
There, there is no etiquette morality advocated by civilized society, there are just all kinds of gray transactions, with their own bodies, with their own meager possessions, and with their lives, to gamble on an unknown tomorrow.
Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Such a lesson from the past also tells us how necessary it is for China to insist on cracking down on "pornography, gambling and drugs."
Because as long as someone can't restrain his desires and amplify his selfish desires infinitely, when he waves banknotes, there will naturally be interest groups that take the initiative to provide services, which is probably an important reason why Cambodia's "yellow gambling and drugs" phenomenon is rampant and repeatedly banned.
Perhaps, in the future, Cambodia will become better and better with the efforts of the government, and the people at the bottom can also find a way to survive legally in this country, but obviously, the current Cambodia is still a long way from such a goal.