One person died and more than 20 are missing at sea after a boat carrying Chinese nationals sank off the coast of Cambodia, an official said on Friday.
The boat with 41 Chinese on board ran into trouble off Sihanoukville on Thursday, provincial spokesman Kheang Phearom told AFP.
The once quiet fishing village of Sihanoukville has been transformed in recent years by a Chinese investment boom, with dozens of casinos opening.
There are increasing reports of Chinese workers being smuggled or smuggled into the city to work.
Kheang Phearom said 19 people were rescued and the body of a woman was recovered from the water.
Officials are looking for the others, he said.
Provincial police chief Chuon Narin told pro-government media company Fresh News that a representative of the group told police they left China on September 11 from a port in Guangdong province by speedboat.
Less than a week later, they were transferred to a wooden boat with two Cambodian crew members in international waters, the police chief said. The ship began to sink after collapsing on Thursday.
He said a fishing boat picked up the two Cambodians and left, leaving them and their boat in the sea.
According to Kheang Phearom, the Cambodians had also been arrested for questioning.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Beijing is in “close contact” with Cambodian officials.
China “requires that the Cambodian side make every effort to conduct search and rescue operations and quickly confirm and find out the relevant circumstances,” Wang said.
– illegal work –
Cambodian authorities have sought to crack down on human smuggling and human trafficking networks after widespread reports of people from other Southeast Asian countries being enticed to migrate in order to be seen as lucrative job opportunities.
“The sinking and loss of life is a real tragedy, but the fact that there is smuggling and human trafficking where it happened is no surprise,” said Jeremy Douglas of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
“We’ve seen information and cases related to drug and timber shipments in the area in recent years and the coast is pretty wide open.”
Recently, there have been several reports of Chinese workers being tricked into working in casinos or online scam operations in Sihanoukville and prevented from leaving the company.
Police and immigration officers raided a compound in the city earlier this month and arrested more than 140 illegally working foreigners, including 130 Chinese.
Officials said they found evidence of illegal detention and torture, illegal gambling, prostitution and human trafficking.
In addition to thousands of cellphones and hundreds of computers, officers also confiscated handcuffs, electric batons and electric batons.
Last month, around 40 Vietnamese workers at a Cambodian casino broke out and swam back home across a river, while dozens of Indonesians were rescued from a scam operation in Sihanoukville in July, according to media reports.
