The Cromwell Group recently assisted the Washington DC based International Justice Mission (IJM), a Non-Governmental Organization, with their investigative efforts in South East Asia.
This particular IJM mission focused on the rescue of children who are victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. These children, as young as 5 years old, are most often forced to work in brothels catering to foreign pedophiles. Freeing the oppressed and prosecuting the pedophiles remain the joint mission objective.
Senior Cromwell Group intelligence professionals provided highly valuable information documenting the extent of this human trafficking. They and our indigenous network developed operational plans to assist IJM with the rescue and repatriation of these young children.
This operation was featured on a Dateline NBC special aired in the United States on January 23rd 2004.
The Cromwell Group remains committed to providing high value intelligence and operational support to these very important missions. (See AP article)
SVAY PAK, Cambodia, Mar 29, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Cambodian police raided a notorious brothel district Saturday and rescued at least 36 Vietnamese girls, some younger than 10 years old, who were forced into prostitution. At least 13 pimps and brothel owners were arrested in the raid on Svay Pak, a shantytown outside Phnom Penh with several brothels in its alleys.
All the girls, the operators and pimps are ethnic Vietnamese, police said. At least 22 of the girls appear to be younger than 10, said Khut Sopheang, a Municipal Court prosecutor. Nine girls, aged between six and nine, were found in one house alone, a police officer said.
"This is quite a major operation we have executed," said Brig. Gen. Un Sokunthea, director of the Bureau of Juvenile Protection and Anti-Human Trafficking at the Ministry of Interior. "Some girls are as young as 5 years old. They cried in fear when we found them," she said.
The raid was conducted in cooperation with the Washington-based International Justice Mission, or IJM, a Christian group whose mission is to help people from oppression and abuses such as trafficking, sexual exploitation and forced prostitution.
The group's members accompanied some two dozen policemen who conducted the raid but they refused to speak with reporters. Police took the girls to the group's safe house.
Svay Pak, the most notorious of Phnom Penh's red light districts, has about 50 brothels. It was recently closed down twice, ahead of a regional tourism conference and a summit of a Southeast Asian leaders, but later reopened.
Child rights advocates say Cambodia is increasingly becoming a magnet for foreign pedophiles due to lax law enforcement, corruption in the courts and the poverty that forces young boys and girls into prostitution. Prostitution is illegal in Cambodia but continues to thrive. Sex with those aged 14 or younger is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
