Photo by: Wesley Monts
A Cambodian woman who was trafficked to Taiwan in 2005 speaks to Post reporters on Wednesday after her return to Phnom Penh.
Aven, now 24-years-old, says she agreed to fake her marriage to a Taiwanese broker and move abroad some five years ago because she thought it would enable her to earn enough money to support her family in Kandal province.
Speaking upon her return to Phnom Penh on Wednesday, however, Aven – who requested her real name be concealed and is identified here only by her Taiwanese moniker – said the broker confiscated her passport and sold her into slavery almost immediately after their arrival in Taiwan in late 2005.
“A week after I arrived in Taiwan, I was sold to work with a … vegetable company there,” she said.
“I was forced to work whole days without rest or pay. I didn’t receive enough money as I was promised.”
Instead, Aven said, she had only been paid enough to cover the cost of meals.
After working for a year as a vegetable seller, Aven was then sold to a plastic manufacturing company, where she worked for a further three years for almost nothing, she said.
Aven described her remuneration at that job as being “like an allowance” that was dolled out at the discretion of her employers.
She said that though she had quickly realised she was being exploited, she had no hope of escaping and returning to Cambodia.
“I wanted to come back but my passport was taken away,” she said. “I cried every day.”
In early 2009, Aven was picked up by Taiwanese immigration police and contacted her mother, who reached out to the NGO Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility, CARAM Cambodia’s executive director Ya Navuth said on Wednesday.
He said CARAM Cambodia organised for Aven to be relocated to the organisation’s shelter in Taiwan, where she stayed until returning to Phnom Penh on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters upon her return, Aven’s voice broke as she described how she had naively agreed to the fake marriage plan, a decision that she attributed to her own lack of education and opportunities.
“I would like appeal to Cambodian girls to go to school and study higher education so that they will have higher knowledge and education and they can find good work and not be cheated or trafficked by the brokers,” she said.
...read the full story in tomorrow’s Phnom Penh Post or see the updated story online from 3PM UTC/GMT +7 hours.
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