The hostages recount their experience as captives at a special event held to celebrate their return. They also spoke of the harsh conditions on the fishing boat before they were captured by pirates, where they were working under slavery conditions.

Pirates ‘Worse than KR’

With his pale features and a sadness behind his eyes, 37-year-old Nhem Soksan yesterday described his life for the past 1,672 days as a hostage of Somali pirates, claiming it was worse than living under the Khmer Rouge regime. Mr. Soksan is one of four Cambodians – along with Em Phumany, Khorn Vanthy and Kim Kimheng – who returned to Phnom Penh on Monday after a harrowing ordeal that saw the ship where they worked, the Taiwanese-owned, Omani-flagged Naham 3, get captured south of the Seychelles archipelago by pirates during the peak of Somali piracy in March 2012...

All the men said conditions on the boat before their capture were bad as well and urged Cambodians to be cautious before traveling abroad for work.
“We were detained by the pirates. I left this country to work on a fishing boat and I ended up working from 18 to 21 hours a day, so we only had three to six hours of sleep,” Mr. Phumany said.
Mr. Soksan urged other Cambodians to avoid working abroad at all costs due to the widespread mistreatment he saw and the lack of accountability for companies or groups that abuse foreign workers...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/31548/ ... han-kr---/