A British TikToker who boasted of living in Thailand while claiming UK advantages 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 moms with children in Bangkok with one in every 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 motion after concerns were raised about Cairo’s welfare.
Ms Matthews blamed ‘people within the UK [who have been] trolling me’ online following controversy round 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 4 years of not living within the UK’.
She said she qualified resulting from her ‘six mental disorders’ which required ‘ongoing treatment costs to be met by the NHS by the taxpayer’.
British residents can receive certain UK advantages while living abroad in 17 countries, though Thailand shouldn’t be amongst them.
Ms Matthews now insists her videos were ‘only a joke’ and that she was ‘lying … to get more followers’.
She claims she has been refusing to eat for 2 days in protest at conditions within the detention centre, which she claims is ‘hell on earth’.
Speaking from the power, she told MailOnline: ‘I’m locked up in a cell for a lot of the day with 16 other people and none of them speak English. It’s so hot and overcrowded that you would be able to barely breathe.
‘No person helps 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 bug bites, in addition to head lice.
‘We will’t sleep at night because there’s a lot screaming and shouting,’ she added. ‘There are 35 women and youngsters within the cell next to ours.
‘It’s unbearable in here, I can’t stop crying and just need to get out as quickly as possible.’
Ms Matthews’ two other sons are still living within the UK with relatives, and she or he says she doesn’t have custody of them.
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