Cambodian PM to expel NGO over TV program on sex workers
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia’s prime minister on Tuesday ordered the ouster of an American-led Christian organization that seeks to rescue and rehabilitate women working in the sex trade, saying its comments in a TV report last week demeaned the country.
The report by CNN showed the head of the Agape International Mission, Don Brewster of Lincoln, California, describing child prostitution in the Svay Pak suburb of Phnom Penh. The report was a follow-up to a 2013 story on the same subject.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, speaking at a graduation ceremony, singled out the program’s reporting that Cambodian mothers sold their daughters into prostitution as particularly insulting, although the 2013 story by CNN had previously reported that. The new report also showed Brewster declaring that Svay Pak’s child prostitution problem had improved.
Representatives in Cambodia for Agape, or AIM, could not be contacted for comment.