Observers have noticed a shift in how human trafficking cases have evolved. The perpetrators now target young Indonesians with higher education. They are also no longer sent to countries in the Middle East, but instead to other Southeast Asian nations.
It was a tense four-hour journey from the city of Bavet to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh for Indonesian worker Slamet.
The man – who had just escaped from an online gambling ring where he had been forced to work for a period of three months – was making his way to the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia to seek help in order to return home.
But memory of his experience, which happened in 2023, still haunts Slamet to this day.
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