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170 'slaves' returned



South China Morning Post
Saturday  January 3  1998
Cambodia 
170 'slaves' returned 


DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR in Phnom Penh 
Thai authorities have returned 170 Cambodians freed from a human
trafficking ring which tricked and sometimes drugged people into virtual
slave labour in Thailand.

Thann San, deputy director of Cambodia's immigration police in Koh Kong
province, told the Cambodia Daily the 93 women and 77 men were returned
to the country on December 24.

Cambodian rights workers say Koh Kong, along the Thai border in western
Cambodia, is a main shipping point for human trafficking. The Cambodian
border town of Poipet in the northwest also allegedly has a thriving
human trafficking trade.

Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese traffickers recruit hundreds of poor
Cambodians every month to work in Thailand, promising highly paid jobs on
construction sites or as domestic servants.

But once in Thailand, the workers end up in factories labouring under
slave-like conditions and are often arrested and deported back to
Cambodia if they ask for their promised salaries.

Other Cambodians are forced into prostitution or used as beggars on the
streets of Bangkok, human rights workers have said.