Cambodia's Somaly Mam 'ban' turns out to be bogus

An official's Facebook post becomes an international story. But it's not correct

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | 7 October 2014

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Same Sky Not banned

The controversy over Somaly Mam, the Cambodian anti-trafficking activist, just took a turn for the weird.

A few days ago, a Cambodian official wrote a Facebook post in which he blasted Mam, suggesting she was unfit to run a nonprofit group. In the Facebook post, the official also mused on Martin Luther King Jr., race relations, Barack Obama and the power of dreams.

Then, he got into a squabble with a Facebook commenter over whether or not he has a gold tooth. (He denies having a gold tooth.) And, he dropped two F-bombs.

But his comments about Mam made it into a Cambodian paper and swept the world: Bloggers and tweeters claimed that Cambodia was banning her from running a nonprofit.

Mam’s career imploded after a Newsweek report in May left the impression she lied about her past. This month, however, I report in Marie Claire that many of the central allegations against Mam don’t stand up to scrutiny.

On Monday, the Cambodian official who wrote the Facebook post, Phay Siphan, issued a letter denying there is any ban. The letter says, in broken English, that "Royal Government of Cambodia have no any intention of blocking or detouring the humanity activities of AFESIP as well as Mrs. Somaly Mam." AFESIP is the charity that Mam founded, although she is no longer affiliated with it. "We still highly respect and fully support its and her activities," the letter says.

In a phone interview Monday, the official, who works as a government spokesman, confirmed that both the Facebook post and the letter are his.

He said the confusion stemmed from a "misunderstanding" by reporters. "We support her," he said of Mam. "We support her work. The government has no problem with it."

This month in Marie Claire, I write that some of Newsweek’s most damaging claims against Mam unraveled when tested. In my reporting, three people cited in Newsweek as saying she had lied about her childhood told me their views were misrepresented. One of the three, identified in Newsweek as a woman, is, in fact, a man.

My reporting also upended a central allegation-that Mam had coached a girl in her care to lie about being trafficked. I report about documents from an independent aid group that show the girl had, indeed, been trafficked.

Regarding another claim, that Mam’s daughter was not kidnapped as a teenager, but had run away: I interviewed the daughter, and she said on the record that she was kidnapped.

To be sure, as I note in the Marie Claire article, contradictory statements don’t prove which version is the more accurate one. And some people may have a vested interest in Mam’s redemption. But my findings, taken as a whole, raise questions about Newsweek’s premise.

Mam, who grew up during the Khmer Rouge era, has long said she was sold into a brothel in her youth. She launched her charity AFESIP (a French acronym for "Acting for Women in Distressing Situations") some two decades ago in Cambodia to provide shelters for girls who were trafficked or at risk of being trafficked. Later she helped start a U.S. foundation, which funded AFESIP. Amid the controversy, the foundation announced Mam’s resignation and cut funds to AFESIP.

In recent weeks, one of AFESIP’s other main backers, the nonprofit Project Futures, said it would continue funding the group, having performed a financial examination of its records.

Cambodia is a hot spot for human trafficking. The U.S. State Department ranks the country as one of the most problematic nations in the world for the buying and selling of people, including sex trafficking of women and children. In a 2014 report, the State Department said that the sex trafficking of children—once more visible—has become more sophisticated about staying out of sight. The State Department said the Cambodian government isn't doing enough to combat trafficking, that prosecutions are on the decline and that traffickers are aware of loopholes in the legal system there.

And Mam, in her first interview since the scandal broke, told me she stands by her story.

Pesta, a vice president of The Overseas Press Club, has written for The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan and Newsweek.