Cambodians 'abducted for prostitution'

20/09/2012
Bangkok Post

Three teenage Cambodian girls were found locked in an apartment room on Thursday morning, and police believed they were abducted and destined to work as prostitutes.

The girls, aged about 15, were heard screaming for help after they were locked in an apartment on Sukhumvit Road, soi 77. A neighbour informed police.

They cannot speak Thai or English. Police said a volunteer spoke to the frightened children in their own language.

According to the girls, they were locked inside the room by a man who said he would help them trace their parents.

Police believed they were likely destined to work as prostitutes in Thailand. They have been sent to a shelter while inquiries are made about their homes and families in Cambodia.

Virgins' trade keeps plaguing Cambodia

Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Claire Knox
The Phnom Penh Post

Seventeen-year-old Chann, not her real name, was first approached by a female sex broker hovering by the gates of the Kandal province garment factory she had spent the past few years working at.

Tangled in a web of poverty and physical toil, the promise of US$2,000 in exchange for her virginity was an alluring one.

Chann agreed to sell herself, and within days was swiftly whisked away to the capital, and sold to a Chinese customer waiting in a hotel room.

However, the prospect of the broker or the Chinese customer ever seeing the inside of a prison for their crimes is slim.

Appeals Court Opens Hearing in Violent Child Trafficking Case

The couple is accused of beating and sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl after purchasing her from Theoung Ret for $400.

23 August 2012

Khou Theara, VOA Khmer

PHNOM PENH - The Appeals Court on Monday opened a hearing in a gruesome child trafficking case, in which a married couple is accused of torturing a young girl.

In 2010, Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Va Saroeun and his wife, Meas Nary, who are both high school teachers, guilty of child trafficking and torture, while it found Theoung Ret, 64, guilty of child trafficking.

The couple is accused of beating and sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl after purchasing her from Theoung Ret for $400. Theoung Ret is alleged to have bought the girl from her mother.

Cupar’s life-saving links with Cambodia

The Cambodian girls are pictured with the US Olympic athletes.

Saturday 18 August 2012
Fife Today (UK)

The lives of two Cambodian girls, rescued from the human trafficking trade, have been turned around thanks to Cupar-based football business AMsportstours.

While undertaking a sports tour of the north west area of Cambodia, managing director Austin MacPhee, who also runs AMsoccer, came across the SALT charity which rescues children from a life of abuse, gives them safe accommodation, and helps get their lives back on track through sports and leadership training.

Explaining the link up Austin said: “AMSports now assists with providing scholarships for girls, running football tours to Cambodia with all profits going to SALT, and also introducing donors to the charity.

Senhoa: A Refuge for Victims of Sex Trafficking

07/10/2012
By Clarissa Burt
Co-written by Brooke Smith
Huffington Post

Human trafficking has grown to become a large and perilous problem worldwide. The United Nations estimates that 700,000 to 4 million women and children worldwide are trafficked every year. Women everywhere, especially in poverty-stricken areas, are illegally being sold by organized crime units for purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labor. Cambodia is one place in particular where a remarkable organization, Senhoa, extends every effort to offer at-risk girls an alternative route by teaching them valuable skills that they can use to create a new and improved way of life. I discovered from Senhoa the story of a young Cambodian woman who I will call Mai.

At 16, Mai was training to become a tour guide when her boss took advantage of her, raped her and dropped her off in a brothel. She was subsequently sold to eight men in the following two days. The last man to abuse Mai deemed her unfit to fulfill his needs and dropped her off in a street in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Fortunately, Mai's family was able to call on Senhoa and count on them to provide the safety and education that Mai desperately needed. After only two years, Mai is now a professional jewelry maker. This young woman's story was so intriguing that I contacted Senhoa to learn more about how they operate.

‘Slaves’ finally home

Four trafficked fishermen return to Cambodia yesterday after being rescued by South African authorities. Photograph: Vireak Mai/Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 06 July 2012
Phak Seangly
The Phnom Penh Post

Four Cambodian men held for months as slaves on a boat off the coast of South Africa were greeted by their relieved families at Phnom Penh International Airport yesterday after being rescued from their ordeal.

One of the fishermen, Kha Mara, 29, said the group had suffered months of physical and mental torment after believing they had signed up to work in Japan.

“We were forced to work without rest and salary and even during rainstorms,” he said on his return. “If we refused to work, they beat us.”

The four men, all from Kampong Cham province, were punched and kicked if their Taiwanese captors believed they were not doing enough work or if they “looked lazy”, Kha Mara said.

Challenges for Cambodian migrant workers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fjLUf6Cz08

Horrors of human slavery revealed in art

Cambodian artist Vannak Anan Prum created a series of drawings about his harrowing four years of kidnapping, forced labor and escape.

https://picasaweb.google.com/heng.soy/PrumVannakSOrdealHorrorsOfHumanSlaveryRevealedInArt?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Prum Vannak - Human trafficking victim in Thailand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM5-RQHhB00

https://www.box.com/s/d65ace9057d96aadd7e6

Using Art to Fight Human Smuggling

Vannak Anan Prum (l) is presented with an award for his anti-trafficking work by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (r), June 19, 2012. (Photo: RFA)

A Cambodian man wins a U.S. award for raising awareness of human trafficking in Southeast Asia.

2012-06-19

Radio Free Asia

A Cambodian who was mistreated, starved, and tortured as a victim of human trafficking was hailed Tuesday for raising public awareness of the criminal practice through drawings that recreated his bitter experience.

Vannak Anan Prum, who suffered years of forced labor on fishing boats in Thailand and on a plantation in neighboring Malaysia, was named by the U.S. State Department as one of 10 “Heroes Working to End Modern-Day Slavery.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented him with the award in conjunction with the department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report that tracks the extent of the human smuggling problem across the globe.

The award was given “in recognition of his amazing courage to escape slavery and his remarkable activism to end human trafficking.”

Swimming to freedom, and into center of fight against modern-day slavery

Tuesday, Jun. 19, 2012
By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD - McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- In 2009, Cambodian Prom Vannak Anan dove into a dark sea and away from a life of beatings, unpaid labor and imprisonment on a fishing boat. The lights of a port, four miles distant, guided him. The desire to be free kept him swimming.

Anan had been a new father and husband in 2005 when a "job agent" offered him a path to a better life, then moved him far from home. Instead of a job, he was sold as a laborer to a Thai boat owner. For years, he endured physical and emotional pain, hoping for a chance to escape.

So around midnight in 2009, as the crew slept on a rare night when they anchored near enough to see the shore, he swam for freedom.

Instead of mercy, the Malaysian police he'd hoped would help sold him to a palm oil plantation. It took him another year - much of it in jail - to finally find help, freedom and a way back to his family.

Interview of Prom Vannak, a Cambodian who slaved for 3 years on a Thai fishing boat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCExv2yGJl4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCExv2yGJl4

Confined To A Thai Fishing Boat, For Three Years

Vannak Prum of Cambodia was sold onto a Thai fishing boat where he was forced to work in miserable conditions for three years before escaping. Thailand's huge fishing industry is coming under increasing criticism for using trafficked workers who have been sold to unscrupulous ship captains.

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman. (Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR)

June 19, 2012
Shannon Service and Becky Palmstrom
NPR (National Public Radio, USA)

Thailand supplies a large portion of America's seafood. But Thailand's giant fishing fleet is chronically short of up to 60,000 fishermen per year, leaving captains scrambling to find crew. Human traffickers have stepped in, selling captives from Cambodia and Myanmar to the captains for a few hundred dollars each. Once at sea, the men often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land.

First of two parts

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, and he needed money for the hospital bill. He intended to work for two months, but ended up meeting a human trafficker.

A few days later, Prum was sold onto a Thai fishing boat the length of a basketball court, where he worked in tight conditions with 10 men. He says he didn't reach land again for three years.

"I didn't get paid," he says. "I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night."

Migrant abuse trending up

Bun Ly (centre), a 36-year-old trafficking victim who was forced to work on a Thai fishing vessel under slave-like conditions, with other trafficking victims at an Adhoc office yesterday. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 15 June 2012
Sen David
The Phnom Penh Post

Human rights group Adhoc released a report on the state of Cambodian migrant workers yesterday, saying that tales of abuse from migrant workers and their families have increased five-fold compared to the same period last year.

Seventy per cent of this year’s 141 complaints concerned domestic workers abroad, Adhoc says, and the government’s moratorium on sending maids to Malaysia may be partially to blame for the spike in incidents.

According to Adhoc president Thun Saray, when recruitment companies closed after the government ban, their former clients were essentially set adrift.

“We noticed [incidents] were increasing, because rights violations against male and female migrant workers in Malaysia have deteriorated even more since the government banned companies from sending workers last year,” he said. "The company is no longer responsible for the workers, so the loss of contact is increasing almost every day.”

Street children at risk

A boy sells kramas along Sisowath Quay in Phnom Penh last night. Photograph: Derek Stout/Phnom Penh Post

Thursday, 14 June 2012
Khoun Leakhana and Xiaoqing Pi
The Phnom Penh Post

Street children in Cambodia were in danger of sexual abuse, human trafficking and traffic accidents when they peddled or begged, and their own families were often the perpetrators, NGOs yesterday told a conference aimed at focusing media and public attention to the issue.

“We are extremely sympathetic with the children who are forced to sell things on the streets by their parents,” Licadho’s Om Somath said.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 children work on the streets of Phnom Penh, according to a survey by local NGO Friends in 2001.

Trapped between the borderlines

11 June 2012
Thane Burnett
The Sudbury Star (Canada)

POIPET, Cambodia--In the border land, there seems to be two clear but hard choices.

Either you somehow make your way from Cambodia to the promised land of Thailand to scratch out a better life through hard work, or you cross over into a brutal new world of forced labour and slavery.

Though both options begin with the same rush of desperation.

All combined, those who find themselves in developed countries -- including Canada -- ship back more than $300 billion to their families in developing nations.

Here on the impoverished divide between Cambodia and Thailand, thousands of transient workers jump constantly back and forth across the line. Some go the legal route, others trek through the dense jungle -- in some cases, finding a common currency with official patrols that should be guarding the line, rather than profiting from it.

Women flee from Thai karaoke parlour slavery

Tuesday, 12 June 2012
Mom Kunthear
The Phnom Penh Post

Two Cambodian women escaped Thailand on Friday a week after being trafficked across the border and sold into sex slavery in a Thai karaoke parlour, according to the rights group Adhoc and Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection officials.

Tan Kimrany, an officer for Adhoc’s Women’s Rights program, said yesterday that the two filed complaints last Friday after allegedly being tricked by a married pair of brokers named Nuon and Nang, who had promised them jobs in Phnom Penh.

“They worked from 4pm until 3am, but they did not get a single cent from the karaoke parlour owner,” she said.

“Their boss threatened to beat them until they died if they attempted to escape, and if they wanted to go back home they had to work for one to two years to pay the debt,” she added.

Limited Resources Hamper Victims’ Rescue

RFA, May 14, 2012

Three young Laotian girls carry water in a village in Khammouane province,
Nov. 27, 2002. AFP

Hundreds of girls in Laos have been trafficked in China over the last two years.

Hundreds of girls have been trafficked into China from the northern provinces of Laos, according to a Lao anti-human trafficking official, but efforts to rescue them have been largely unsuccessful due to limited resources.

The official, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity from the capital Vientiane, said that over the past two years, hundreds of families from provinces bordering China had approached officials requesting help in locating their missing daughters.

They said they believed the girls had been smuggled to China, lured with the prospect of work, or married to Chinese nationals, from their homes in Louang Namtha, Oudomxay, Bokeo, and Phongsaly provinces.

Most of the girls trafficked across the border are from the ethnic Khmu minority.

“The anti-human trafficking unit, with help from Chinese authorities, has been able to bring some of the trafficking victims home, but less than the number reported by families,” the official said.

“If there are cases brought up by families, usually there is a follow-up. In one case, a girl from Bokeo was located in China after a discussion [with Chinese officials] to bring her back home.”

The official said that the search for missing girls in China is largely unsuccessful.

“One reason is because of the bureaucracy, and the second is because China is such a large country,” he said.

While Laos and China cooperate on fighting crime and deterring human trafficking, China maintains no anti-human trafficking office in Laos to assist in finding victims.

Every province in Laos operates an anti-human trafficking unit, but many officials complain that a lack of budget and personnel prevents them from effectively carrying out their jobs.

Trafficking to China

According to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 Trafficking in Persons report, Laos is a source … for women and girls subjected to sex trafficking, and men, women, and children in conditions of forced labor in factory work, domestic labor, agriculture, and the fishing industry.

Lao men, women, and children are found in conditions of forced labor in Thailand, Malaysia, and China, the report said, adding that “Lao women and girls reportedly are subjected to conditions of trafficking in China, where some are forced to marry Chinese men.”

According to the report, Laos does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, though it said the government has been making “significant efforts” to do so.

It said the Lao government continued to rely almost completely on nongovernmental organizations and international organizations to provide victim assistance in 2010.

Lao authorities reported investigating 20 trafficking cases involving 47 alleged offenders, and convicting 33 trafficking offenders in 2010, compared with zero convictions during the previous year.

Reported by Apichart Supapong for RFA’s Lao service. Translated by Somnet Inthapannha. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

New Roads to Trafficking - ផ្លូវថ្មីនាំទៅកាន់ការជួញដូរមនុស្ស

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfD9azahonA

Heinous tales

WAO’s Wong Su Zane says it takes time for a traumatised victim to even trust WAO.

Tuesday April 10, 2012
The Star Online (Malaysia)

Women Aid’s Organisation (WAO) social work manager Wong Su Zane says trafficked victims are often illiterate villagers who are duped into going to a foreign land for work opportunities that never materialise.

“The agents arranging for their entry here will prepare forged documents for these villagers to sign, and they don’t know what they are getting into.

“There was a case whereby an underaged girl from Cambodia realised her family book (the equivalent of our birth certificate) details had been altered to show an older age so she could work here as a maid. Her family refused initially to let her go but they were threatened.

“Then, there are migrant factory workers whose passports are kept and are not paid their salaries.