Police rescue sex slaves in Cambodia

Published Apr 5, 2005

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Phnom Penh - Cambodian police said on Tuesday that they rescued 18 Vietnamese women allegedly forced to be sex workers in a massage parlour near the kingdom's famed Angkor temple complex.

Sun Bunthong, chief of the provincial anti-human trafficking unit said police raided the 99 Massage Parlour in the Siem Reap town and saved 18 women aged between 18 and 23, last Friday.

However, the massage parlour's owners, a Vietnamese couple, had fled before police arrived at the place, he said.

"Every evening they were forced to have sex with guests, and each woman had to pay half of the money she charged a guest to the owners," Sun Bunthong said.

"They were not allowed to go out the house. One 18-year-old woman who had violated the order was stabbed with a knife twice in her back by the owners" and survived, he said.

If a woman spent longer than 15 minutes with a guest, the owners would take all the money she charged the guest, Sun Bunthong said.

All the women were kept in one room and had to keep silent during the day, and if they argued with one another the owners would cut their pay to $50(about R300) each, he said.

If a guest complained to the bosses that a woman was unhappy about having sex with them, the owners would also dock their pay $50, the police chief said.

He said some women had owed the owners up to $2 000.

All the women were now under the care of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre, Sun Bunthong added.

Last February, police rescued 11 Vietnamese women who were allegedly forced to work in a brothel in the same province. - Sapa-AFP

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