A Thai woman who claimed 10 days ago that her blood was harvested at a Sihanoukville scam operation said Friday she had fabricated her account in order to get a swift rescue.
National Police ruled that a Cambodian security guard’s corpse found hanging in Sihanoukville’s notorious “Chinatown” compounds was death by suicide.
Murders, kidnappings, corpses on the beach — news reports out of Sihanoukville paint a picture of violent and serious crime in the coastal city. But authorities are increasingly shutting down information about police work and pressuring journalists over negative stories, crime reporters say.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng said he wasn’t supposed to be presiding over Preah Sihanouk province’s annual meeting this week. But issues of order and security — which “continue to happen endlessly” — compelled him to attend.
Royal Thai Police deputy commissioner Surachate Hakparn said a Thai woman who was rescued from a slave compound in Cambodia had three to four bags of blood harvested from her and was in danger of organ trafficking, according to Thai media.
Major action is needed to address a crisis of forced labor, slavery and torture in Cambodia, says a collective of 35 civil society groups.
Two further charges were added against a Chinese man who has been working to rescue forced laborers, as the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court sent the man and two others to the provincial prison for pretrial detention.
Preah Sihanouk prosecutors have provisionally charged a Chinese human-trafficking rescuer with incitement to discriminate and false declaration amid accounts of widespread forced labor of foreign nationals in the country.
Amid reports of widespread human trafficking and enslavement in Sihanoukville, a Chinese businessman working to rescue victims was questioned by the city’s prosecutors on Tuesday.
UPDATED 5:47 p.m. — A Chinese businessman central to the ongoing rescues of trafficked and enslaved scam workers in Sihanoukville and across the country is under police investigation, his team said.
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