Seven Cambodian women who were trafficked into sex slavery in Japan are due to be repatriated home on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Chum Sounry said yesterday.

The women, all in their 20s and 30s, had been trafficked in November last year, and appealed to the Cambodian Embassy in Japan for help via Facebook the following month.

All were lured in by a Japanese broker, who promised them high wages for restaurant work in Gunma province, “but instead he forced them to provide sex services for free to his customers”, Sounry said.

Anti-trafficking NGO Chab Dai, which this month reported 19 students were trafficked to China under the false pretence of studying fashion, said there was a developing trend of traffickers “duping” the educated middle class with changing tactics.

Chab Dai spokesman Joseph Arnhold said the public needed to be made “aware of the risks, regardless of the high standards they may assume a country has”.