The country’s top anti-trafficking official said Cambodia would investigate news reports of rampant human trafficking in the country, as a rights group noted how neither the government nor civil society were positioned to look at the emergent type of trafficking.
The U.S. State Department has pointed to mushrooming scam operations trafficking foreign nationals into Cambodia as well as other violations involving migrant workers as it downgraded Cambodia to the lowest level possible in its Trafficking In Persons annual report.
A Chinese national, who was trafficked to Cambodia, alleges that his blood was harvested seven times since last August, after he refused to partake in scam operations, leaving him frail and putting his health at serious risk.
Military police spokesperson Eng Hy said Cambodian and Thai authorities had rescued 103 Thai nationals from a Pursat province special economic zone on Tuesday morning and brought the individuals across the border on Wednesday morning.
Chinese nationals, as young as 15 years old, are being trafficked and forced to work in online gambling and scam companies in Sihanoukville, according to pleas for help sent to a group of Chinese volunteers that rescues victims of human trafficking in Cambodia.
More than 300 trafficked Cambodian women were returned from China in the first nine months of the year, mostly after being scammed into marriages, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
A first-of-its-kind, 10-year study tracking the lives of 128 Cambodian sex trafficking survivors reveals frequent shock and re-exploitation as they try to reintegrate into the community, and fears and intimidation while navigating the justice system, according to a series of research reports published this week.
A three-fold rise in human trafficking cases handled by the Interior Ministry could be one of the costs of the Covid-19 pandemic’s pressure on jobs and livelihoods, government and civil society officials said.
A 21-year-old woman says she feels like a “newborn” after arriving home to Phnom Penh last week, rescued from China alongside nine other sex-trafficking victims. The woman was 17 when she left Cambodia hoping for a good job, but became entrapped in years of abuse.
A Cambodian woman who was rescued in China after posting on Facebook about her two years as a sex trafficking victim might not be allowed to return home till March, her mother said she was told, though authorities denied there was a fixed date.
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