TikToker who boasted about UK benefits in Thailand arrested, now on hunger strike
A British TikToker who boasted of living in Thailand while claiming UK benefits says she is on hunger strike after being arrested by Thai authorities.
Mum-of-three Ellis Matthews, 32, is being held at a detention centre for mothers with children in Bangkok with one of her sons, four-year-old Cairo.
She was detained earlier this month for allegedly overstaying her visa ten days after it was cancelled, MailOnline reports.
Thai officials were said to have taken action after concerns were raised about Cairo’s welfare.
Ms Matthews blamed ‘people in the UK [who have been] trolling me’ online following controversy around her lifestyle.
Posting videos to 16,000 followers under an account titled ‘@mumontheruninasia’, she claimed she was receiving £2,300 in Disability Living Allowance ‘for the past four years of not living in the UK’.
She said she qualified due to her ‘six mental disorders’ which required ‘ongoing treatment costs to be met by the NHS by the taxpayer’.
British citizens can receive certain UK benefits while living abroad in 17 countries, though Thailand is not among them.
Ms Matthews now insists her videos were ‘just a joke’ and that she was ‘lying … to get more followers’.
She claims she has been refusing to eat for two days in protest at conditions in the detention centre, which she claims is ‘hell on earth’.
Speaking from the facility, she told MailOnline: ‘I’m locked up in a cell for most of the day with 16 other people and none of them speak English. It’s so hot and overcrowded that you can barely breathe.
She says she’s being held at the Mother and Child Detention Centre in Bangkok (Picture: Tim Clarke)
‘Nobody is helping me, and I’ve just been left here to rot.
Ms Matthews claims the conditions have left her and her son covered in rashes and insect bites, as well as head lice.
‘We can’t sleep at night because there’s so much screaming and shouting,’ she added. ‘There are 35 women and children in the cell next to ours.
‘It’s unbearable in here, I can’t stop crying and just want to get out as quickly as possible.’
Ms Matthews’ two other sons are still living in the UK with relatives, and she says she does not have custody of them.
Head of Investigations
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
