A top official at the Ministry of Social Affairs on Thursday defended his job as the publisher of two of Phnom Penh’s leading pornographic magazines, saying his family could not survive without them.
Lim El Djurado, 53, who publishes and writes “Teenage Stimulation” and “Rooster,” said he could not live on his salary as the director of the ministry’s Department of Planning and Statistics alone. “So there is only the pen,” he said.
He declined to say how much he earns at the ministry. But, according to calculations, if he were to make 100 percent profit on the magazines, which cost between 1,500 riel and 4,000 riel, he would receive $1,937 each month. “I spend Saturdays and Sundays writing in order to earn income for my two daughters to go to university,” he said, adding that they help design and layout the magazines.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the Ministry of Information to invalidate the licenses of pornographic magazines, and for them to be confiscated from newsstands.
But Lim El Djurado says his magazines are works of literature. “I don’t like to write [about] politics but culture and literature,” he said. “I just feel shocked and afraid when somebody says we are doing something wrong for society.” And besides, he added, “I don’t know what to do on Saturdays and Sundays.”
