Brian McConaghy, Founding Director of Ratanak International, was in Burns Lake last week to discuss how his charity has been helping victims of sexual exploitation in Cambodia.
The Burns Lake Community Church, which has been supporting the charity for the last nine years by funding its sexual exploitation recovery program, invited McConaghy to speak in Burns Lake.
About 70 people showed up to hear McConaghy speak at the Burns Lake Band facility on April 8, 2016. McConaghy presented a documentary about his work with Ratanak in Cambodia, followed by a question and answer period.
Pastor John Neufeld with the Burns Lake Community Church said he is very impressed by McConaghy’s work.
The focus of Ratanak has shifted throughout its 26 years of existence. It started off with McConaghy stumbling on to a refugee camp while on holiday in Thailand in 1989.
“They were just bone,” said McConaghy. “I’ve never held a human being that was bone before, and was still breathing.”
He wanted to help, and realized that Cambodians needed medicine. However, as a result of a United Nations embargo, he had to smuggle them through — all nine tons of medicine, worth $100,000.
“I didn’t care, to be honest,” said McConaghy.
McConaghy distributed the medicine with the help of the government there, but his cover was blown when they made him go on a press conference. McConaghy returned to his job at the RCMP, castigated for helping an “enemy state.” However, as political climates changed and people started donating to his cause, Ratanak grew.
McConaghy said that what motivates him is “compassion and caring for people that are downtrodden.”
“Our centerpiece is really working with young girls and young women that have been trafficked and purchased and manipulated and sold by the Vietnamese mafia,” he said.
McConaghy said the Vietnamese mafia traffics these women worldwide to as far as South Africa; however, most women tend to end up in China, forced into marriages as a result of a gender imbalance there.
“We’re getting involved in trying to get them home again, because we got many 17-year-old girls not even knowing what country they’re in, calling us on our 1-800 line.”
“Most Canadians can’t relate to being born into poverty, being a refugee, hard labour, and being punished, and tortured, arrested and killed,” added McConaghy. “Cambodians can.”
- With files Xuyun Zeng