MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has repatriated 13 of its nationals who were jailed in Cambodia for acting as surrogates and violating Cambodia’s law against human trafficking, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Sunday, December 29.
A Cambodian court convicted the women on December 2. The Philippine government worked towards seeking pardon for them, which Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni granted on Thursday, December 26.
All 13 departed Phnom Penh and have arrived in Manila.
“Upon the request of the Philippine embassy and with the endorsement of the Royal Government of Cambodia, the Royal Decree pardoning all 13 Filipinos paved the way for their immediate repatriation,” the DFA said in a statement.
The Philippines thanked Cambodia for the humanitarian treatment extended to the Filipino mothers throughout their judicial processes, and attributed their safe homecoming to good longstanding relations between the two countries, as well as their commitment to fighting human trafficking and other transnational crimes.
In its statement, the DFA also reminded Filipinos that surrogacy, or when a woman carries and delivers a child for another person or couple, is banned in Cambodia.
The women were among the 24 arrested in a raid in Kandal province in September — 20 Filipinos and four Vietnamese. Eleven of the women who were not pregnant were deported. The remaining 13 were found guilty of selling, buying, or exchanging a person for cross-border transfer, according to a Kandal court.
They were recruited online by a business based in Thailand.
Citing Cambodia’s interior ministry, an Associated Press report said that while the ringleaders had not been identified at the time the women being charged in October, it considered the women offenders, rather than victims, who conspired with organizers to act as surrogates to sell babies for money.
Still, the Philippine government maintained that the women were victims of trafficking themselves.
After Thailand banned commercial surrogacy in 2015, couples turned to its neighbor Cambodia for cheap surrogacy services. Cambodia then banned the practice in 2016, but the underground market continued to operate. – Rappler.com
