HOTELS and guesthouses that do not take action to report child sex abuse
in their establishments will face closure, government officials warned
yesterday.
Hor Sarun, undersecretary of
state at the Ministry of Tourism and chairman of the Child Safe Tourism
Committee, told hotel representatives from Phnom Penh and other tourist
hotspots such as Siem Reap and Sihanoukville that they were the first line of
defence against child sex abuse.
“We are training hotel staff to
report child sexual harassment to the police, because otherwise their hotels
will be closed,” Sarun said.
He said that hotel staff should
report sightings of warning signs, such as adults – particularly foreigners –
taking children into their rooms.
Hotels also ought to keep tighter
records of children’s and adults’ entry and exit of their premises and ask to
see ID cards, he said.
The influx of two million
international tourists to Cambodia in the year’s first 10 months – a 23.7 per
cent increase from the same period last year – coincided with 103 reports of
tourists suspected of having sex with children, Sarun said.
He added that the government is
working on stricter sex tourism laws, but for now is focusing on educating
hotel staff.
“In Phnom Penh, there are
hundreds of hotels and thousands of rooms,” said Touch Sarum, deputy governor
of Phnom Penh. “So it is up to hotels to report child sex abuse.”
Chin Chanveasna, executive
director of NGO End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking in Cambodia
(ECPAT), said that it was in businesses’ interest to report such incidents,
which otherwise could undermine their reputations and their large material
investments.
ECPAT has trained staff in over
121 hotels to detect and report child sex abuse, he said.
Grace Basion, manager of Phnom
Penh’s Pavilion Hotel, said that whether it was fair to close hotels that are
the site of child sex abuse depended on those establishments’ management, but
noted that the Pavilion was already taking precautions, including checking ID
cards when visitors looked like they might be underage.
The Hotel Association of
Cambodia’s president, Lou Meng, said that yesterday’s was not the first
government appeal for hotels to buckle down on child sex abuse, and urged
government co-operation.
Since 2007, 798 suspects of child
sex abuse have been arrested and 322 prosecuted, according to the Anti-Human
Trafficking department.
ECPAT recommends that the
Cambodian government close gaps in bringing offenders to justice by, for
example, cracking down on their ability to use hush money.
SEN DAVID
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JUSTINE
DRENNAN
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