About more than 1,000 Vietnamese citizens have been rescued by Cambodian authorities from casinos in this country and thousands of other citizens are completing procedures to return home. That is information given by the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Le Thi Thu Hang at a regular press conference in Hanoi on September 22.
Referring to the situation of Vietnamese citizens being tricked into working “light jobs, high wages” at online casinos in Cambodia recently, Ms. Hang affirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the representative agencies in Cambodia are “Very concerned and focused on the protection of citizens in the face of many Vietnamese citizens being scammed and illegally brokered labor in Cambodia.”
“Over the past time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has closely directed the representative missions in Cambodia to actively work with Cambodian authorities to promote inspection, investigation, and identification and rescue Vietnamese citizens who were scammed and brokered to Cambodia to work illegally,” Hang told the press.
Hang said that as of September 21, the number of Vietnamese citizens rescued was more than 1,000.
Only “from the beginning of September this year, when Cambodia launched a campaign to crack down on criminal organizations that detained and forced illegal workers, the number of Vietnamese citizens rescued by join works of Vietnamese representatives and the Cambodian authorities has reached about 400 people,” said Ms. Hang.
The Vietnamese and Cambodian sides began to pay more attention to the situation of the Vietnamese being forced to work for online casinos and being exploited, beaten, and forced to pay thousands of dollars in ransom after a video went viral on the Internet on August 18 showed that 40 Vietnamese escaped from a casino in Cambodia and swam across the Binh Di River to An Giang province.
On September 17, a group of 60 Vietnamese fled from a casino in Bavet city, Cambodia’s Svay Rieng province. At the end of the afternoon of the same day, the Cambodian Police asked the “business establishment” to hand over 11 more Vietnamese citizens.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on September 17 ordered a crackdown on casinos on illegal gambling. As a result, more than 500 people were arrested.
Mainly these casinos are invested by the Chinese and hire Vietnamese people to lure other Vietnamese to work.
Thoibao.de (Translated)
