By: HIM Sokunthea & NGOEUM Phally
DMC
It is a shinny morning. Full of great respect and love, children younger than 16 years are enthusiastic to see the arrival of a lady whom they keep calling mother at Kampong Cham center, a long-term rehabilitation place offering a peaceful environment for girls that is reminiscent of their home provinces.
The energetic voice of calling from children is turning louder and louder like using mass speakers when they see a black luxurious car arriving near the front gate of the center. The smiling children accelerate to greet a lady by giving her a warm hug and kiss.
This lady is known as a founder of AFESIP, a Cambodian non-governmental organization dedicated to rescuing, housing and rehabilitating women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam who have been sexually exploited, and Samaly Mam Foundation, a non- profit organization supports anti-trafficking groups and helps women who had been in the sex trafficking business. Somaly Mam is a Cambodian human right activist who is believed to have saved hundred of women from sexual slavery.
“I establish the Foundation to change society not to discriminate the female slavery’s victims. Everyone hurts when we are neglected and discriminated. ” she claims.
Somaly is recognized globally. From 1998 to the present time, she received many awards including Prince of Asturias award, Glamour Woman of the year, CNN hero, Honorary Doctor of Public Service from Regis University, and the World’s Children’s Prize for the Right of Children. She was also listed as 100 most influential people in Time Magazine, Heroes of Anti-trafficking award from U.S department and so on.
Somaly Mam’s early life
Born as an ethnic in Mondulkiri province, the northwest of Cambodia, Somaly Mam came from a poor family that struggle for life. When she was five years old was the period that Khmer Rouge regime took over the countries. With the structure of Khmer Rouge administration, thousand of Cambodian people were moved to country side. Parents and children like Somaly were forced to work separately and that was how she lost her parents.
After the regime, she was living as an orphan in the forest until she was ten when she met a man who promised to find her parents. She called the man “Grandfather” in a respect to the elder. Staying with grandfather, Somaly received neither formal education nor fulfill the expectation to see her parents; instead, it was the beginning of her nightmare journey. She was raped and treated as slave. Until she was fourteen, grandfather sold and turned her into sexual slave. She later was forced to marry a Khmer Rouge soldier. During that time, Somaly was always injured by her husband through beating and violent sex.
In the late 1980s, her husband sold her to a Phnom Penh brothel. "I was one of the eldest at that place. There were a lot of very young girls. We were treated worse than dogs,” adding that she was forced to live with snakes and scorpion,”said Somaly as quoted in the Nation. There she had to have five to six clients per day. Torturing and raping came to her immediately if she couldn’t sleep with clients.
According to the Road of lose innocence, Somaly might look very unattractive because of her black skin and ethnic originality, but she appears in a great outlook to Westerners. In 1993, she met a French man named Pierre Legros, a French man working in a Humanitarian organization in Phnom Penh. He was the first person who refused to sleep with her. Instead of non-violence and rape, Pierre helped her to build her capacity through education and got her escaped from the brothel to live in Paris. "He told me I was beautiful and paid for a school for my organization. We became brother and sister,” said Somaly in the Nation.
Having a strong optimism that she can help other sex victims, Somaly came back to Cambodia in 1996 and worked as a women to hand out the condom and medicine to brothels. In the same year, she found AFESIP and in 2007, Somaly Mam Foundation was created through the supported from the U.S department.
Way to get Success
As an ethnic girl, it was quite hard for her to struggle with her life.
“My life was so worst; I didn’t have parents to take care, I was raped and sold as sex slavery. For Cambodian people, I was looked down and seriously discriminated as a minority girl”, she stated.
However, she has struggled in her life and become succeed now based on some factors.
“Accepting the past experience and struggling in life allow me to succeed now”, she said.
She explains that first she needed to accept the fact and her past experience. Bad experience allows her to find good way to be successful. Second, she received help from the surrounding people who are so kind, helpful and reliable.
“Without help, support and love from Spain princess, I won’t become who I am now. I don’t want her whom regards me as her daughter to be upset and hurt. Therefore, I have tried my best and make her dream become true.” She added.
Finally, children help and give her energy to go through failure. She recalled her painful experience when she did not have a mother to hug and to comfort while upset and lonely. Thus, she established the Foundation to help the victims who were left neglected and ignored by other people.
“Whenever I look into the children’s eye, I know their pain because I used to experience that feeling. Psychological pain is much worse than physical one. Only love, care, kindness and encouragement could cure their feeling,” she continues.
The Somaly Mam Foundation was set up to change society by reducing discrimination on the victims. It has three mains goals. The initial one is to fulfill victims’ needs such as love and motherhood. Secondly, it provides chance for them to be educated through formal and non-formal education like sewing, weaving and etc. Finally, it works to eliminate victims’ discrimination and hatred, she claims.
“Somaly does not only refer to me but Somaly also stands for every slave victim in Cambodia,” she stated.
So far, Somaly has tried to empower all victims, so that they can live in a better condition. She has established one group of women who are sex slavery called “Voices for Change”. Eleven girls from Voices for Change go to different places to educate the poor families not to sell their children and share experience about their past time. This initiative also cooperates with 6 ministries including Ministry of Women Affairs. All the 11 girls, moreover, travel to many countries to educate and share experience with other countries.
“I intend to promote Cambodia victims to be a reader, to educate and share experiences to other countries that encounter sex slavery,” she proclaims.
The organization has worked on agriculture sector to help the poor family to be able to earn extra money to support the family. In the future, she plans to create a business center to sell the handicraft products abroad.
Somaly suggests that in order to be a good model for other people, a woman should reveal the truth, know what she wants, know about herself, respect and love herself first, struggle in life and scarify in limited condition. Also, she should use bad experience as a lesson and try to avoid same mistakes. Finally, she should not try to run away from the bad experience, or it is like a shadow to haunt her everywhere.
THE END
