Cambodia rescinds expulsion of U.S. charity workers

Cambodia’s prime minister said he has rescinded his decision to expel an American-led Christian organization that seeks to rescue and rehabilitate women working in the sex trade, accepting its apology and explanation that it did not intend to demean Cambodians.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said the Roseville, California-based group, Agape International Missions, would be allowed to continue its normal operations and that he hoped the group had learned a lesson from the controversy.

Hun Sen ordered the group expelled three weeks ago after its personnel appeared in a CNN report about child prostitution in Cambodia. Hun Sen took offence that the report said Cambodian mothers sold their daughters into prostitution.

He and other officials said the report should have noted that the women profiled were ethnic Vietnamese, rather than Cambodia’s mainstream ethnic Khmer. Many Cambodians share a longestablished prejudice against Vietnam, a much larger neighbouring country that has traditionally been suspected of coveting Cambodian territory and resources.

“This nation is not for insulting,” Hun Sen said Tuesday at a forum for conservationists.

Agape International Missions, founded by Don Brewster and his wife Bridget, opened its first centre for former child sex workers in 2006, according to the group’s website. Brewster of Lincoln, California, described child prostitution in the Svay Pak suburb of Phnom Penh in the CNN story, which was a follow-up to a 2013 report on the same subject.

The website says the group, also known as AIM, “has been granted unique permission by the Cambodian government to conduct investigations, perform raids, make arrests and rescue victims of sex trafficking alongside local government officials within the country of Cambodia.”