A follow up from his last column. It’s worse than the first one, but again, it’s crucial reading:
Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.
She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.
Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times.
Watch the video, too, if you can bear it, and take a moment to be grateful for how lucky we all are.
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In addition to being thankful for our safe, comfortable lives, it would also be great to donate to/get involved with the Somaly Mam Foundation, which works to end human trafficking and slavery: http://www.somaly.org/
Why is it only Nick Kristof who seems to care about these issues? I get the sense that he is the only public intellectual talking about the most despicable human rights violations in the world today.I say thanks to Equal Rights for picking up Kristof’s columns and helping to spread awareness and discussion.Robert McGibbon ’11