The Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged four women with human trafficking on Saturday after they allegedly tricked four other women into being sold to Chinese men as brides, an official said Sunday.
The suspects were charged after being arrested in Meanchey and Daun Penh districts on Friday, according to Kim Chenda, director of the anti-human trafficking office in the Interior Ministry’s department of anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection.
Mr. Chenda said the suspects were preparing to send two women to China when police received a tip from the parents of two women already sent there.
“They were arrested when I got a tip from the parents of the previous two victims who live in Kratie province that the four had arranged to send two more women to China,” he said.
Mr. Chenda said the suspects told the first two victims that they would help them find high-paid jobs in Singapore, “but they sold them to China to marry Chinese [men] instead.”
The two women already in China, he added, “told their parents that they were forced to marry Chinese men and that they were beaten by their husbands.”
