Two Cambodian fishermen, trafficked into slave labour in South Africa in mid-2011, returned safely to Phnom Penh on Friday after being rescued by legal resource group the Community Legal Education Center.

CLEC program officer Huy Pichsovann, said the victims had left Cambodia to work in Japan but were smuggled en route onto a boat, then forced to work without pay.

The men told him there were seven other Cambodian slave labourers still in South Africa, and that CLEC was working with its South African partner NGO to bring them back, he said.