Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:00 by GxMedia
PARAMARIBO, Suriname, CMC – The police have rescued three teenage Guyanese girls who were kept as sex slaves in a brothel in a gold mining township in the Suriname’s interior.
The police report that during a raid of the brothel, three individuals including a Guyanese woman, allegedly the owner of the brothel, her husband and a bodyguard were arrested.
The girls reportedly told detectives that they were brought to Suriname under the pretence that they would be working in a shop. But instead they were forced into prostitution in a brothel in Cabanafo in the Lawa region, a gold field close to the border with French Guiana.
“The girls were forced into prostitution. If they refused they were beaten and all the money they received from customers were seized by the brothel owner”, said police spokesman Humphrey Naarden.
The victims allegedly crossed the Suriname-Guyana border illegally.
Meanwhile the authorities are still looking for two other Guyanese girls who at the time of the raid place were not present.
According to Naarden one victim is a fifteen-year old girl whose parents filed a missing persons report with the Guyana police some while ago.
Through their own efforts the parents received information that their daughter has been spotted in Cabanafo in Suriname’s interior.
This information was relayed to the office of the Prosecutor General in Suriname which subsequently ordered an investigation into the matter.
During a raid in Cabanafo by the Anti-Terror Squad, police and military officers, the girls were found.
The suspects are being charged with human smuggling, human trafficking and being member of a criminal organization. The Trafficking in Persons Unit of the Suriname Police Force is continuing investigations.
