A joint force of soldiers and police raided a large house near the Thai-Cambodian border in Aranyaprathet district, Sa Kaeo province, suspected of serving as a safe house for Cambodian job seekers smuggled from Poipet.
Police say that the house, located in Ban Wang Mon in Tha Kham sub-district, is surrounded by high concrete walls with access to the border canal through a back door and is an ideal site for human trafficking activities.
A number of people found in the house have been taken into custody for questioning, but it is unclear whether the house’s owner, identified only as ‘Niwat’, was among the detainees.
Police suspect that the house is run by a major human trafficking gang, specialising in helping desperate Cambodian civilians who want to return to Thailand to find jobs, but at a high price.
Police said that the gang would use a boat to pick up the Cambodians at a rendezvous in Poipet and then ferry them across the narrow canal to designated locations on the Thai side of the border.
They would then drive them to the safe house in private cars, to avoid raising the suspicion of soldiers and police deployed at checkpoints.
From the safe house, the illegal migrants would be sent deeper inland or to sugarcane plantations in Sa Kaeo or neighboring provinces, which are short of labour during the harvest season.
About 900,000 Cambodians working in Thailand left en masse in the aftermath of the 5-day armed border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia in late July.
This was at the urging of the Cambodian government, which promised them jobs and a better life. Many of them discovered, however, that there were no jobs for them or they did not have the skills needed for the available jobs.
