PHNOM PENH, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said on Tuesday that he has decided not to close a Christian anti-sex trafficking organization as its founder has made a public apology.
Don Brewster, founder and CEO of Agape International Missions (AIM), held a press conference on Monday to express his "heartfelt apology" for any offense the U.S. news broadcaster CNN report about child sex trafficking had caused in Cambodia.
Brewster blamed CNN for mistakenly identifying three girls sold into sexual slavery and rescued by AIM as Cambodian, even though he explicitly told CNN that the victims were ethnically Vietnamese.
"Now, AIM has apologized, so the mistake falls on CNN," Hun Sen said during a forum at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh. "I have decided to allow it (AIM) to continue its operations."
The Cambodian prime minister gave the AIM a reprieve just three weeks after he ordered the closure of the organization, accusing it of providing false information to CNN over child sex trafficking in Cambodia in order to raise funds.
In its last month's story The Cambodian girls sold for sex by their mothers, the CNN interviewed ethnic Vietnamese girls in Cambodia, but mentioned they were Cambodians. With strong protest from the Cambodian side, CNN changed the story headline to "The girls sold for sex by their mothers."
Hun Sen said earlier this month that the story seriously insulted Cambodian wives, daughters and sisters.
"My country is poor, but you cannot insult my people," he said.
The story featured a CNN reporter returning to Phnom Penh's Svay Pak district-- once a child prostitution hotspot--to interview girls featured in a 2013 CNN documentary starring actress Mira Sorvino.
Svay Pak district, which cropped up in the 1990s as a thriving sex destination with many brothels, had no longer existed for over 15 years.
