Despite a 'crackdown' on rampant illegal sex, Cambodia is still a world capital of paedophile tourism, writes David McNeill. At 12, Pov knows the sexual geography of the river-front area in Phnom Penh like the seasoned prostitute he has become. The four middle-aged Frenchmen in front of us? She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. If I don't like boys he can fetch girls. Otherwise, in exchange for the meagre contents of my wallet, Pov and his three barefoot, scruffy friends will guide me to a safe hotel and stay the night.
As the sun sinks over the Mekong, Sisowath Quay in Cambodia's choking capital is a slow-moving river of human traffic. Young couples walk arm in arm, tourists gaze at one of Asia's most beautiful sunsets and children such as Pov ply their trade, zeroing in on what they call rich foreign "lady-boys", or gay men.
In the crowd of mainly brown-skinned people, white men stand out like flies on a cake. Some are alone, wearing hats and jackets in the stifling evening heat, strolling or sitting on the river wall, eyeing the crowd. The Frenchmen stand chatting and smoking, exuding the easy calm of long-term residents.
These are no idle boasts. Campaigners say children as young as three are still being trafficked and rented out all over this country, mostly to Asian men but increasingly to foreign tourists pouring in through some of the most open borders in the world. Such stories should belong to the past. After a decade during which Cambodia earned its unwanted reputation as a haven for paedophiles, anti-trafficking campaigners have recently begun to bare teeth. Dozens of foreign men have been imprisoned or sent back to courts in Europe and the US, many by the tough deputy head of Phnom Penh's anti-trafficking bureau, Keo Thea.
The deportation to Vietnam of faded glam-rock star Gary Glitter, who was renting a house in the city centre, also served notice, said then minister of women's affairs, Mu Sochua, that Cambodia was no longer open for business to the world's child abusers. Last year, the local courts convicted two of Cambodia's most notorious paedophiles, Karl Heinz Henning and Thomas Baron von Engelhardt, of raping girls aged Some of the children were bound and gagged while the men tortured them in Nazi regalia.
