How five men have turned cruel fate into a killing at Phnom Penh’s genocide sites.

A group of pretty young backpackers comes rolling up in a tuk tuk, joking and laughing, at the gates of Tuol Sleng. They step out, grab wallets to pay their driver, and are swarmed by a misshapen and missing-limbed human mass. Laughter dies.

Burns and stumps are flaunted. The girls fork out money without looking into the beggars’ faces. This is not a display of compassion: they are paying to be left alone.

The beggars disperse, pocketing their riel. One, persistent, follows the girls into the museum. Leaning heavily on a crutch, he blocks the entrance to the ticket booth and waves his handless forearm. “More,” he hisses from the shadows of his tattered straw hat, “more!” The girls try to step around him. The beggar does not budge. An idle security guard watches the scene: this is nothing new. The girls eventually oblige – the beggar takes their money in his good right hand – before entering the museum to bear witness to misery of a very different kind.

In a country that offers little in terms of social security, turning to a life of begging is more often a matter of necessity than choice for individuals with physical disabilities. Even for the physically fit, a lack of capital, education, or skill training usually limits one’s career opportunities to low-paying service work or manual labour. When a jobseeker suffers from impaired vision, mobility, or disfiguring burns, one’s career prospects all but disappear. While several non-governmental organisations offer specialised vocational training for such individuals, access to their resources is by no means universal, and without financial support from their families, many disabled Cambodians are forced to provide for themselves by begging.

While the majority of Cambodia’s beggars live a destitute existence, a small group in Phnom Penh have learned to turn the exhibition of their suffering into a profitable enterprise. This is particularly the case for those currently begging at Phnom Penh’s genocide sites.

Between 1975 and 1979, nearly 20,000 people were held and tortured by the Khmer Rouge in S-21, a high school-turned-prison that is now home to the harrowing Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Sok Thy, 56, has been begging in front of Tuol Sleng since 2006. In 1993, a bottle of acid accidentally fell on his face. With customers repulsed by his burns, he was forced to abandon his bicycle-selling business.

Sok Thy’s soft-spoken and friendly demeanour seems totally incongruous with the forceful way in which he practices his trade. Hiding his face under a baggy cap and krama, he lingers at the museum’s entrance.

When a tourist approaches, he pounces. In one swift movement, he flips off his cap and thrusts his face towards his target. “Money,” he whispers. “For family, for rice.”

Tourists start. Many give him a wide berth. Few look at his half-melted face; at the button of scar tissue where an ear used to be; at the translucent film of skin that covers his clouded right eye.

Sok Thy extends his cap. Money is dropped in. If a tourist refuses, or if Sok Thy deems their contribution insignificant, he will follow them to their tuk tuk demanding more. Sok Thy says that foreigners – especially Australians, the English, and Koreans – always give more than Cambodians.

The approximately $12.50 Sok Thy claims to make each day goes towards supporting his unemployed wife and five young children. The only outside assistance he receives is a $30 monthly stipend from the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity (see boxed text) to help offset the cost of his children’s education.

While Sok Thy says that he would eventually like to repair bicycles or open a shop in his home, he also seems content to continue begging. “As long as I am alive, my family will move forward,” Sok Thy says. “When I am gone, they will have nothing.”