Condom Crackdown
PRAMPI Makara municipal and district health officials have said that they have renewed their crackdown on market vendors who were selling sexual enhancement drugs and condoms.
Four vendors were detained briefly following a raid, and police found hundreds of sexual enhancement drugs and condoms. Neither the drugs nor the condoms were illegal, the vendors had to be re educated by health officials about the risks associated with selling condoms since many of them had expired expiration dates and the drugs should have been prescribed by doctors.
These vendors now have signed contracts which state that will stop working in this kind of business. There have been 37 such raids conducted since November 2008. However, these crackdowns are often a double edged sword and are not without their drawbacks.
Every night as the sun sets, prostitutes begin looking for sex clients at a Phnom Penh public park, where they have worked for the past 10 years. Until Cambodia passed a new anti trafficking law, they used to carry a condom always, however, a new provision in the law which bans public solicitation of sex has made that much more difficult. Carrying a condom is now evidence of a crime. If a prostitute is caught with a condom by the police they accuse the woman of disorder and prostitution and disorder.
As a result many of the prostitutes have stopped using condoms as they are afraid of being arrested. The penalty for this crime is one to six days in prison and a fine of 3,000 riel, or about $0.75.
Although the penalty is small, sex works and human rights organizations say that the new law has been an obstacle to another government initiative, the 100% use of condoms in the sex industry, which was declared in 1999. This initiative has been made impossible by the new law. The new law forces prostitutes and sex workers to move from one location to another and the moving targets make it very difficult to promote condom use.
Another problem is that many customers are not willing to use condoms because If they do the customers feel that they we are prostitutes. The new law puts sex workers at risk of HIV. The stricter the law the more widespread HIV/AIDs becomes.
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