Cambodia Cracks Down on Busty Women Selling on Facebook

Women’s rights groups have slammed a crackdown in Cambodia on busty women who wear provocative clothing while selling goods via Facebook live. They have called the crackdown as dangerous and baseless.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said low cut tops were an affront to Cambodian culture. He ordered authorities to track down Facebook vendors who wear them to sell items like clothes and beauty products. A popular trend in the conservative country.

“Go to their places and order them to stop live-streaming until they change to proper clothes,” the prime minister told the government’s Cambodian National Council for Women on Feb 17.

“This is a violation of our culture and tradition,” he said. Adding that such behavior contributed to sexual abuse and violence against women.

While Cambodia’s young population is increasingly educated, many expect women to be submissive and quiet, a legacy of Chbap Srey, an oppressive code of conduct for women in the form of a poem that was on primary school curricula until 2007.

The national police posted a video to Facebook on Wednesday, in which a Cambodian woman makes a public apology for sullying the “tradition and honour of Cambodian women” by wearing “extremely short and sexy clothes” in her online sales pitches.

Women arrested for selling on Facebook

Cambodia’s Interior ministry confirmed on Wednesday that authorities were “taking action.” Above all in line with the prime minister’s orders. Referring further questions to a police.

Amnesty International regional director Nicholas Bequelin said the prime minister’s comments were a “dangerous instance of victim blaming”.

“This rhetoric only serves to perpetuate violence against women. It also stigmatizes survivors of gender-based violence,” he said in a statement.

Furthermore one in five Cambodian men said they had raped a woman in a 2013 United Nations survey.

Ros Sopheap, head of the charity Gender and Development for Cambodia, said the government should look at the reasons why women sell goods online instead of dictating what they wear.

“They always talk about culture, culture, culture,” she told Reuters. “What about jobs? What about education? These things are broken in Cambodia. And what about people’s right to make a living?”

Seven Cambodian women’s rights groups pointed out that the women vendors had breached no law.

“There is no evidence-based research that affirms that women’s clothing choice is the root cause of degradation of social morality” they said.