BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA- Just over two weeks ago, twenty-nine residents from Takeo Province began their journey across Cambodia toward in Thailand. They were accompanied by five labour brokers who had approached each of their villages in November, shortly after the annual rice harvest, with the promise of off-season work. Among the migrants were fourinfants and children under the age of ten, five 17-year-old boys and a 12-year-old girl. Unfortunately what these families failed to realize was that the labour brokers were in fact human traffickers, and that the children would soon find themselves in the begging, labour, and sex industries. What the human traffickers did not know, however, was that they were being followed by Battambang’s Anti-Human Trafficking Police Unit.
Regrettably these instances are often a regular occurrence and it poses the question what motivates these families to migrate? The first factor is due to lack of work with many of the families finding themselves jobless following a harsh rainy season and the second is lack of education regarding the lucrative smuggling and trafficking industry.
Projects such as SISHA’s Youth and Women’s Legal Rights Program in Phnom Penh as well as organizations like the International Organization for Migration and the Healthcare Centre for Children work in Cambodia’s provinces to help spread the message about safe migration while also raising awareness about the realities of human trafficking. This imperative message sadly had not yet reached the families from Takeo Province, who had chosen to migrate to Thailand with no knowledge of their future sector of employment.
The next question that may spring to one’s mind is what motivated the traffickers? The simple answer is money, the promise of one hundred dollars per person brought over the Thai border.
One hundred dollars for the small children who would be trafficked into begging gangs, any money they earned taken from them while they were also robbed of the chance for an education and a future. One hundred dollars for the 17-year-old boys who would be trafficked into Thailand’s logging or long-range fishing industries, subjected to years of physical labour under inhumane conditions. One hundred dollars for the 12-year-old girl who would be trafficked into the sex industry, left in the hands of a merciless brothel owner and robbed of any chance of normality in her life.
The Battambang Anti-Human Trafficking Police, suspicious of the traffickers’ moved to the border, called SISHA to assist and then proceeded to intervene. They stopped the group at the border and preventing the trafficking from ever taking place. The five traffickers, aged 18-35, were all arrested.
It was a success for the anti-trafficking community as the Takeo residents were repatriated to their villages after being informed of what was about to happen to their friends and family members and of the dangers of blind migration. At their request and in coordination with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, SISHA successfully placed three of the 17-year-old boys in aftercare facilities where they will receive the important vocational skills training and the necessary education surroundingthe trafficking industry ensuring they will not fall victims again in the future. The 12-year-old girl was similarly placed in a suitable female aftercare facility.
In an environment where oftentimes intervention comes at too late a stage when the damage has already been done, this was indeed a victory for SISHA and the Battambang anti-human trafficking police. Due to a timely intervention, the girl and boy’s childish innocence remains intact and their futures brighter and more prosperous than before.
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