Phnom Penh Post
Yon Yom, a
20-year-old trafficking victim, is reunited with his family after
returning from Indonesia. He had been forced to work in slave-like
conditions on a Thai fishing vessel. Photograph: Vireak Mai/Phnom Penh
Post
Eight fishermen returned to Cambodia from Indonesia on Wednesday
after nearly five years of forced labour on a Thai fishing boat.
Leaving at different times with the aid of job brokers − some in
2008, others a year later − the men wound up on the same boat. The
labour was gruelling.
“I was ordered to work on the boat day and night. No free time at all
and no wage to send home. And I did not have enough food. Four years
for me was like a hundred years on the boat,” said Va Chantha, 33, who
lives in Kampong Thom province.
Another fisherman, Im Sokuntea, 38, from Takeo province, said that
after his experience he wants to warn Cambodians offered work on fishing
boats by brokers to be wary because the job is too perilous.
He said the men escaped when the boat docked in Indonesia, and, with
the help of the Cambodian Embassy and local authorities, were
repatriated. But not all made the escape.
Huy Pichsovann, program officer at the Community Legal Education
Center, said that after they arrived at airport, they were sent to the
Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department in the
Ministry of Interior for questioning in an attempt to track down the
brokers.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sen David at
david.sen@phnompenhpost.com
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