Tourists, APLE's moswt destructive Tool
Tourist using her Camera as a Weapon of Mass Destr This Woman is a typical Tourist featuring her expensiive digital Camera and training it on any person she might find "interesting". Locals have long got accustomed to this uninvited intrusion into their privacy. Tourists mostly don't bother asking the person of which they take a shot. Expats however have not gotten accustomed to this behaviour which at many times is outright :destructive.
Many western Tourists visiting Cambodia come here with a preset mind on what Cambodia is.
1. Angkor Wat Temples,
2. Khmer Rouge
3. Child Abuse by western Pedophiles
Point 3 has become one of the most dominant issues when it comes to the Question "what do you know about Cambodia" ?
Most western Tourists have an image of the Country that is mostly formed by the western Mass Media. The Mass Media however is heavily influenced by the bombardment of NGO Press Releases which are mostly copied and published without even the slightest editing or cross checking taking place. It is therefore understandable that Tourists visiting Cambodia are "on aleart" ! Once in Cambodia the brainwashing goes on.
The recently released Sihanoukville A-Z Tourist Brochure shv-a-z-2012.jpg
don't object of having one and the same Ad of Sebastien Marot's p9220332.jpg
Friends Org. Childsafe printed 5 times in one issue of a 34 Page Booklet which is most probably financed with Donor Funds he received and demonstrates how money is wasted by this NGO.
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Similar Campaigns are run by APLE on TukTuk's in every Tourist Destination in Cambodia, which demonstrates how desparate the "Child Protection Industry" is for calls to their Report Abuse Hotline.
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Responsible Tourist
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Just how devastating this "Report suspicious behaviour" campaign is to mixed race couples with a child, living in Cambodia is apparent by reading this recent event on Phnom Penh's Riverside.
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After they left, I called the police back and told them she was gone and to not bother coming.
My kids and I went into K-West, got some tea and sodas and we talked about what had happened. I tried to explain, leaving out the bit about pedophilia and replacing it with ‘she thought I was trying to steal you.’ “Why?” they asked. I could only say because I’m white and they look Asian. “But we’re a family,” they said. They know that their Mom is Asian and I’m a barang, but they haven’t yet learned that this is an important distinction in the minds of some.
I know there is more to it than that, but how do I explain that to a 7 and 9 year old?
In moments of silence, as they tried to comprehend what this woman had done, I tweeted about it. The whole thing left me rattled. Bitching about it on internet seemed to help relieve the tension a bit.
My daughter made an astute observation in the aftermath. Thirty minutes later, as we walked to the CD shop she said, “She knows nothing about Cambodia. Doesn’t she know that Asians and Americans can have children? She doesn’t know anything.”
I think my daughter is right about that, or perhaps even understated it a bit. The woman doesn’t know anything about Cambodia. She, in fact, probably only imagines she knows something because of what she has read in the western press, which is something less than nothing in many cases.
If this Italian woman isn’t simply a racist, her mind has probably been twisted by the constant stream of sensational, repetitive and often wildly-overstated stories of western pedophiles and abused children in Cambodia. And not only by the western press but by NGOs that profit from it and feed the beast with exaggerated stats and a constant stream of rehashed horrors stories that keep the funds flowing and the presses humming.
Back in the US a few months ago I saw MSNBC playing their 8 year old ‘Children for Sale’ video yet again, about a brothel village that hasn’t existed in more than half a decade. Some NGOs are still pawning off the ’33,000 child prostitutes in Cambodia’ stat when there aren’t 33,000 prostitutes of any age in Cambodia (link). Some Christian NGOs tell their people that there are women chained to beds and being raped in hostess bars in the center of the tourist district on the Phnom Penh riverfront. Every westerner busted for pedophilia in Cambodia is repeated in the international press for weeks while the fact that they make up a tiny fraction of the pedos in Cambodia goes unmentioned. Nicholas Kristof parachutes into Cambodia to do a sensational live-tweet of a brothel raid, painting himself the cowboy hero riding to the rescue of women and children in the Wild West (link1 link 2). Some NGOs in Cambodia parade their rescued victims (link) of trafficking in front of an insatiable press and voyeuristic tourists to repeat their stories of victimhood again and again - donations accepted. Sex in Cambodia sells.
Don’t get me wrong. Human trafficking and trafficking in children for sex is a real and present problem in Cambodia, and the rest of the world. There are pedophiles, especially amongst the Khmer and Asians, and certainly westerners too. It all needs to be addressed, there is no doubt about that. But the western press’s manic fixation on abusive sex in Cambodia has made the country name synonymous with pedophilia, unfairly and inaccurately so.
From her exposure to the press, tourists like this Italian woman think that pedophiles are as common as cockroaches, that any white man with an Asian looking child must be a pedo who can simply waltz through tourist areas in broad daylight with a prepubescent child on each hand. (And I can’t help but believe that if my children had been white, she wouldn’t have made this judgment about us.) Kristof’s sensationalism has 3-day tourists believing they too can play super-hero, identifying pedos at a glance, swooping to the rescue and saving a child in between their afternoon visit to the Royal Palace and authentic Cambodian Curry dinner on the riverfront.
Ultimately, as good as their intentions might be, as important as the problem is, the press, some NGOs and these misguided tourists are doing the country, the victims of trafficking, and yes, even little people like me a terrible disservice, while enriching and glorifying themselves in the process. This needs to stop. This isn’t a game or an action hero movie or an opportunity for tourists to feel righteous pity. The problems need to be addressed realistically and not in the context of sensationalism, mania, big-money, and dare I say, racism.
Anyway, I figure that when my photo turns up on some Italian website as another pedophile operating openly and with impunity in Cambodia, it will also include a story of my powerful police connections that were on their way to protect me and how she had to flee for her life. A narrow escape by our heroine, just like in the movies. Cambodia is a very dangerous place, you know. And her harrowing tale might even generate a few donations for some Cambodian anti-trafficking NGO.
Casey Nelson did save some evidence of this event taking place and took some shots of the woman on her escape by using his mobile phone camera. see:
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This event is clear evidence of how damaging the Anti Pedophile Campaigns of APLE, World Vision,Childsafe,Friends, Unicef, Ecpat,Intervida,Anesvad and many other NGO's in Cambodia really is.
Of course the NGO's and the western Press believe that is all tolerable for the greater "good" and the protection of children in general. As a man like Casey Nelson you are simply expected to endure this abuse.
After all you are only a man ! (Abuse of men is totally acceptable ?)
The Cambodian Tourism Ministry is well aware of this situation: so is the Interior Ministry and the Jurisdiction. No criticism here as long as the Tourists (also called usefull idiots) and their Dollars keep coming.
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The Tourist Minister suggested that foreign Tourists either Volunteer in some NGO's or donate some of their cash. At least he is honest about his expectations of foreign Tourists, visiting Cambodia.
But the above incident is not an isolated case. see:A Father's Experience in Sihanoukville
