Cambodian police are working with Thai police to investigate the case involving 13 pregnant Filipino women, alleged to be surrogate mothers, according to National Police spokesperson Chhay Kim Khoeun.
He said the women have been charged under Article 13 and 14 of Cambodia’s Law on the Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation.
They have been placed under court supervision after being detained at a police hospital called “May 16 Hospital” in Phnom Penh where they will stay until they give birth.
“We are doing this to protect the children’s rights; to avoid the trafficking or sale of the babies,” said Kim Khoeun.
He told CamboJA News that 25 people, made up of 20 Filipinos, four Vietnamese and one Cambodian woman, who was their cook and nanny, were arrested by Cambodian authorities on September 23.
They were picked up after authorities raided a villa in Borey Vimean Phnom Penh, Prek Anchanh commune, Muk Kampoul district, Kandal province. Among those nabbed, 13 Filipino women were found to be pregnant between one and seven months, while 11 others were not pregnant.
Kim Khoeun asserted that “insemination of the women was not done in Cambodia, but by traffickers in Thailand”.
At the time of the raid, the women were under the care of the Cambodian “nanny”.
The authorities requested the Minister of Interior to send the 11 women, who were not pregnant, to the General Department of Immigration to continue with the deportation process.
The Cambodian woman, who acted as the cook and looked after the pregnant women, will face legal action. “She will be sent to court,” he said.
In terms of cooperation, Kim Khoeun said Cambodia is coordinating with Thai and Filipino stakeholders to “get to the root of the problem”.
According to the Philippines Embassy in Cambodia on October 8, 2024, 20 Filipino women were rescued by the Cambodian police, 13 of them in various stages of pregnancy and were currently sheltering in a local hospital. The embassy said the remaining seven were awaiting repatriation.
The Philippines government also asked Cambodia “not to punish the 13 surrogate mothers” who were trafficked to Cambodia. The Philippines government will provide legal assistance to the women in order to cooperate with Cambodia to solve the case.
Based on preliminary interviews by the Philippines embassy, recruitment of the 20 Filipino women took place in cyberspace by an individual whose identity and nationality have yet to be accurately ascertained.
The embassy said the recruiter with an “apparent assumed name” arranged for the women to travel to another Southeast Asian country but were instead sent to Cambodia where surrogacy was banned.
Surrogacy was banned in 2016 following a prakas signed in October that year, but the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has previously called on Cambodia not to criminalize surrogate mothers. A law to curtail trafficking of child trafficking via surrogacy is being drafted.
A police officer in Prek Anhchanh commune, who declined to be named, told CamboJA News that officers from the district, provincial and immigration departments cracked down on the surrogacy case. Prior to that, the police conducted an investigation by interviewing people living near the villa.
He said the women lived in two separate villas. One villa housed 20 Filipino women and another had four Vietnamese women.
“We received information from people who lived near the villa. They [surrogate mothers] had only been living there for about a month. Then, we spent around one week investigating after we suspected something,” the police officer said.
According to the Associated Press, developing countries are popular for surrogacy because the costs are much lower than in countries such as the United States and Australia, where surrogate services can cost around $150,000. The surrogacy business boomed in Cambodia after it was put under tight restrictions in neighboring Thailand, it wrote.
In July 2017, a Cambodian court sentenced an Australian woman and two Cambodian associates to one-and-a-half years in prison for providing commercial surrogacy services.
In 2023, Cambodian authorities rescued about 200 Cambodians abroad, most of them in China, who experienced “forced marriages” to foreigners and were made to become surrogates.
Am Sam Ath, operations director of LICADHO, emphasized the importance of a thorough police investigation to determine whether surrogate mothers are victims of human trafficking or if they willingly participated in surrogacy.
He stressed that uncovering the truth is crucial to ensuring justice in a complex case.
“In this case, collaboration with the Philippines is essential to investigate whether there is an organized trafficking network behind the surrogacy,” he added.
CamboJA News reached out to the Philippines and Vietnam embassies in Cambodia for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.