News

Six people were arrested in three separate incidents for trying to send 236 Cambodians into Thailand where they were to work illegally, police said yesterday. Prak Saony, Kompong Chhnang provincial anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection bureau police chief, said that police arrested five people in a ...

Less than a week after the arrest of alleged beauty parlour madam Chan Sreynuch, military police say they are taking a closer look at a number of hair salons and beauty shops in Phnom Penh suspected of being involved in human trafficking and prostitution. According to ...

Human and sex trafficking complaints had increased markedly this year, with police vowing to redouble their resources to fight the rampant crimes, officials said at a summit on Friday. Mok Chito, head of the General Secretariat of the National Police Commissioner’s central judicial department, said 113 ...

Five brokers saw their convictions upheld yesterday at Phnom Penh’s Court of Appeal for trafficking 20 Cambodian nationals into Thailand, but legal experts say such convictions for trafficking in Cambodia are still far too rare. While Judge Chan Madyna upheld the men’s 2010 convictions, he shaved ...

Heng Hak wore a blank expression yesterday, her hair recently dyed a shade of blonde. Though her appearance suggested composure, a lift of her pant leg revealed the manifestation of the trauma she tried to escape last year. In March 2011, Hak jumped from the third ...

Malaysia needs to start “paying attention” to a worker protection agreement with Cambodia that has languished for almost two years, a Ministry of Interior official said at a meeting yesterday. The meeting, which included officials from the ministries of Interior, Women’s Affairs, Tourism, Foreign Affairs and ...

All but three of a group of 20 Cambodians who were held against their will on a fishing boat in Thailand had returned after agreeing to pay a fee for “transportation”, a police official said yesterday. The men, believing they were heading to jobs in Koh ...

A group of eight Cambodians held for ransom on a Thai fishing boat were freed over the weekend after their families paid 1,000 baht (US$32) per person to a human trafficker in Thailand who is still holding another nine victims, victims and police said yesterday. The ...

Tek Nim is well versed in dealing with adversity. In year nine, she dropped out of school, began working on the family farm and finally became resigned to the belief that her brightest prospect was to leave Omlaing commune, in Kampong Speu province’s Thpong district, ...

Cambodian Vannak Prum’s destiny changed in a dirt-road town called Malai. It’s a Cambodian outpost on the border with Thailand that is known for its involvement in the trafficking of human beings. Prum arrived in Malai seven years ago searching for work. His wife was pregnant, ...

A large North American union has called on US retail giant Walmart to take immediate action against one of its seafood suppliers in Thailand accused of holding Cambodian workers in debt bondage while barely providing them with enough money to eat. The United Food and Commercial Workers ...

Cambodia migrant workers seeking to leave allegedly exploitative conditions at the Phatthana Seafood factory in southern Thailand said yesterday that they were still being forced to pay to get their passports back. The factory, which exports fish to buyers across the world including Walmart, has come ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s call on Tuesday to strengthen cooperation among ASEAN members to protect the rights of migrant workers echoed recent comments by rights groups who say further protections are necessary as the 2015 deadline for an integrated economic community looms. As that deadline approaches, ...

Seven fishermen who were trafficked to work on trawlers in waters off Micronesia were repatriated to Cambodia yesterday, the fishermen and a rights worker said. The men, who left Cambodia in 2010 and 2011 to work for Giant Ocean International as fishermen in Singapore, were trafficked ...

The Cambodian government was strengthening its capacity to combat human trafficking by focusing on poverty reduction and was eager to work with other groups tackling the crime, Interior Ministry Secretary of State Chou Bun Eng said yesterday. “The issues of human trafficking and migrating workers are ...

Almost 120,000 Cambodians who illegally crossed into neighbouring countries in search of work were repatriated during 2011, new figures from the Ministry of Interior have revealed, prompting a senior ministry official to call for a re-evaluation of how Cambodian workers are treated abroad. Chou Bun Eng, ...

After a year of mounting concern over the treatment of migrant workers both within and outside Cambodia, the Ministry of Labor, NGOs and recruitment agencies yesterday reached an agreement on standardized contracts aimed at minimizing the possibility for exploitation. The groups agreed on a contract between ...

Government authorities are investigating the death of a migrant domestic worker in Malaysia after her family and rights groups raised questions about the stated cause of death from a lung infection, a relative of the deceased woman said yesterday. Na Rith, 42, said his cousin Ouk ...

At least 20 Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have had their passports confiscated by a Thai recruitment agency, while another 10 have gone missing after they fled the same agency fearing they would be trafficked to work on Thai fishing vessels, Human Rights Watch and ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA) plans to propose a set of measures to the government that would put the association in charge of improving protection for Cambodian maids working in Malaysia. A human rights worker, however, disapproved of the plan because it only involved ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it was cooperating with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to repatriate 30 men – part of a group of 65 Cambodians who are in Indonesia after enduring months of abuse and exploitation while working aboard Thai fishing ...

More than two weeks after a ban on sending maids to Malaysia began, work on a bilateral agreement that would protect Cambodian maids working in Malaysia has not begun, officials said yesterday. Ho Vuthy, deputy director general at the Ministry of Labor’s department of labor, said ...

Police said they freed one recruit from a Phnom Penh recruitment agency this weekend and were seeking to prosecute its director, adding that they were doing the same for the director of the SKMM recruitment agency, where 78 recruits were freed last week. The court ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies will consider kicking its most notorious member, T&P Co Ltd, out of the association if the company is found to have falsified documents to conceal the age of a 15-year-old girl rescued from its training centre last week. ACRA ...