Cambodia’s government is “complicit” in industrial-scale online scamming operations that have led to the trafficking and abuse of thousands of people, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a report released yesterday.
In the report, the U.K.-based rights group said that it had identified 53 prison-like compounds that house online scamming operations, as well as 45 “suspicious locations with security features similar to those observed at confirmed scamming compounds.” These operations were scattered across the country, with particular concentration in the port city Sihanoukville and various locations along the border with Thailand.
During the course of its 18-month investigation, Amnesty researchers interviewed 58 trafficked people from eight countries, including nine children, who were among the thousands confined to these compounds and forced to commit online crimes. The group also reviewed the records of more than 300 victims rescued from scam centers.
It concluded that “human trafficking, forced labor, child labor, torture and other ill-treatment, deprivation of liberty and slavery are being carried out on a mass scale in scamming compounds located across the country.”
Amnesty said that its findings revealed a “pattern of state failures” that allowed the billion-dollar industry to establish a firm presence in Cambodia, whose government appeared to be “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs.
The report underscores the extent to which Cambodia remains an epicenter of the scamming economy that has developed in mainland Southeast Asia over the past five years. The United Nations previously cited “credible sources” to the effect that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and at least 100,000 in Cambodia “may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams.” It estimated that Southeast Asia’s scam centers “generate revenue amounting to billions of U.S. dollars” per year.
Most strikingly, the Amnesty report contains voluminous information about the nature of the scamming operations, and the conditions facing those that are tricked into working there. Most of the compounds identified by Amnesty were de facto prisons that employed “concentric circles of security” to wall off their trafficked workforces from the outside world. Most were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men, and protected by layers of security cameras.
Survivor testimony reveals the bleak reality inside the centers, where trafficked workers are subjected to punishments including beatings, shocks from electric batons, and confinement in dark rooms. Many victims reported that escape from these compounds “was impossible.”
“No one wants to be there for long, but no one can escape, either, because if we try to escape then we would die,” said Sawat, a survivor interviewed by Amnesty. The report states that “almost every survivor interviewed by Amnesty International reported living in a constant state of fear while in the compounds.”
The report levels harsh criticism at the Cambodian government, pointing to a sluggish inaction that bordered on open complicity. “The government’s woefully ineffective response and failure to meet its obligations to adequately prevent and investigate the scamming crisis demonstrates its acquiescence and points towards complicity in the human rights abuses taking place,” it argued.
The Cambodian government has claimed repeatedly that it is taking steps to combat the sorts of problems identified in the Amnesty report. The National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking told the rights group it had “taken drastic measures to strengthen national process[es] to counter the online scams, online gambling and human trafficking with significant results.” Earlier this year, the government announced the establishment of an inter-ministerial task force to lead the fight against online scam operations, and Cambodian police have also conducted raids that have led to the rescue of hundreds of trafficking victims.
Government spokespeople have made similar claims to media outlets reporting on Amnesty’s findings. Spokesperson Pen Bona told the AFP news agency, “Cambodia is a victimized country used by criminals to commit online scams. We do recognize that there is such thing, but Cambodia has taken serious measures against the problem.” He also told Reuters that the report was “exaggerated.”
Despite these assurances, however, Amnesty claimed that the Cambodian government response has been “grossly inadequate,” arguing that the authorities had failed to “effectively investigate scamming compounds,” identify and assist victims, or regulate security companies. More than two-thirds of the 53 scam compounds identified in its report were either not investigated by police or had continued to operate even after interventions by the Cambodian authorities, Amnesty said. The situation at 13 of the centers was unclear, while only two “appeared to have been shut down after state intervention.”
It said that as at the time of publication, the government was continuing to investigate or respond to reports of human trafficking “only, or primarily, reactively” – that is, “in response to specific reporting or requests for intervention by third parties.” In some case, Amnesty claimed that it “obtained evidence indicating that the police or military were aware of the human rights abuses taking place at scamming compounds and appeared to have colluded with those perpetrating the abuses, allowing such harm to continue mostly with impunity.”
The Amnesty report seems to support – and certainly does not contradict – earlier reports claiming that scamming operations have flourished in Cambodia due to the protection or backing of powerful businesspeople linked to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).
In September of last year, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the prominent tycoon Ly Yong Phat, and two entities controlled by him, “for their role in serious human rights abuse related to the treatment of trafficked workers subjected to forced labor in online scam centers.” A tycoon with a local powerbase in Koh Kong province on the border with Thailand, Ly Yong Phat has served for years as a senator of the CPP and has made substantial donations to party-linked charities such as the Cambodian Red Cross.
Last month, a report published by the Humanity Research Consultancy argued that “endemic corruption, reliable protection by the government, and co-perpetration by party elites” were the “primary enablers” of Cambodia’s cancerous scam economy. The report, which was authored by Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center who has studied transnational crime networks, included an appendix listing 28 individuals for foreign “indictments, sanctions, visa bans, and/or other accountability measures.” These included Hing Bun Hieng, the head of Prime Minister Hun Manet’s personal bodyguard unit, Interior Minister Sar Sokha, and several prominent tycoons, including Kok An, another CPP senator.
The Cambodian government has strongly denied the conclusions of the HRC report, with spokesperson Pen Bona claiming that its findings “do not reflect reality.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior described the HRC report as “malicious.”