"Two women questioned over human trafficking", 29 July 2019

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court is questioning two women after their arrests in Boeung Keng Kang district's Olympic commune … for attempting to illegally send four women to China.

Municipal court spokesman Kuch Kimlong said … that a 30-year-old and an 18-year-old had been sent to court … following their arrests the previous day by anti-human trafficking police.

“The prosecutor is questioning two female suspects,” Kimlong said.

Keo Thea, chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Office, said … that one suspect was a skin-whitening cream seller and the other a vendor, while two of the four alleged victims were under 18 years old.

… The alleged victims, he said, had told police the brokers had contacted and enticed them to go to China, where they would marry Chinese men in return for $3,000 each. The brokers were responsible for preparing the relevant documents and getting them to China.

As the women intended for trafficking did not have passports, the brokers had planned to send them to Vietnam across the Bavet International Checkpoint in Svay Rieng province.

A network of human trafficking brokers would have then collected them in Vietnam before sending them on to China, Thea said…