Amnesty accuses Cambodia of ‘gross failure’ to stop rampant abuses in scam centers

Cambodia’s online scamming industry is a cesspool of “mass scale” rights abuses where hundreds suffer torture, forced labor, human trafficking, and slavery in at least 53 scam centers across the country, a new report says.

The Amnesty International report, released Thursday, says it is a human rights crisis enabled by state complicity.

Cambodia and neighboring Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have seen a massive proliferation of scam compounds that rely on a large pool of trafficked labor and are run by organized crime groups whose links to powerful local interests allow them to operate with impunity.

The Amnesty report – which is based on interviews with 423 victims of Cambodia’s scamming industry – documents what it calls abuses on a “mass scale” since 2022. It says thousands of migrant workers or trafficked persons, including children, have been confined in prison-like compounds and kept within restraining physical spaces while being forced to carry out online fraud or gambling.

Survivors described to Amnesty being held in cages within compounds with extensive security measures designed to prevent escape, including perimeter walls topped with razor wire or electric fencing, guarded gates, and armed security personnel.

Several compounds operated “dark rooms” used to punish and torture workers who failed to meet work targets, or attempted to contact authorities. Electric shock or stun batons were routinely used against adults and children in at least 19 scam centers, Amnesty found.

“While the main perpetrators of the abuse are organized criminal groups, the Cambodian state has grossly failed to take adequate steps to stop the widespread human rights abuses despite being made aware of such abuses – in many cases, repeatedly,” Amnesty said.

“The state’s failure to comply with its international legal obligations and responsibilities demonstrates acquiescence and points to complicity in these human rights abuses,” Amnesty added in its report titled “Slavery, Human Trafficking, and Torture in Cambodia’s Scamming Compounds.”

The report’s release comes days after Thailand’s prime minister described Cambodia as “a hub of world-class criminality and a national threat” because of the scam centers and closed its land border with Cambodia. That action came amid a Thai-Cambodia territorial dispute.

There was no immediate response from the Cambodian government to the report. Prime Minister Hun Manet has previously declared zero tolerance of human trafficking and a determination to tackle online scamming. He says that Thailand is politicizing the issue.

Earlier this year, scam compounds drew global attention after Chinese TV actor Wang Xing was rescued from Myanmar’s notorious KK Park in Myawaddy, near the border with Thailand, after scammers lured him to Thailand from where he was taken across the river into Myanmar.

Human trafficking

Almost all the scam center workers Amnesty interviewed had been lured using deceptive recruitment tactics and false promises of legitimate job positions, competitive salaries, and accommodation.

After they had been recruited, many told Amnesty they crossed international borders illegally by boats or by traversing rivers and jungles, until they were sold to different scamming compounds where they were then confined and exploited.

Many of them, including children as young as 14, were trafficked from Myanmar, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and even between different scamming compounds within Cambodia.

Van is one such example. The Vietnamese boy, who was 15 years old at the time, was trafficked to a scamming compound in 2023 by his friend after they entered Cambodia through a jungle path at night. Van, who spent a year in the center, was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment by bosses, he told Amnesty.

Another survivor, a Thai woman named Yathada, told Amnesty she was recruited on the pretext that she would have a job in administration. She too was made to cross the border at night.

One survivor from China told Amnesty he had answered what he thought was a legitimate job posting on a Chinese job forum, but was later told the job was no longer at the location advertised in China. He was driven to a town on China’s border with Vietnam and put on a boat to be trafficked to Cambodia.

Another Chinese man, Yutai, told Amnesty that he was trafficked from compounds in Myanmar via car and boat into compounds in Cambodia, without needing to go through any immigration checkpoints.

State complicity

Amnesty noted that despite one or more police or military interventions at 20 of the 53 scamming compounds it identified, the human rights abuses continued unabated at these centers afterward.

Another 18 of the 53 scam centers appear to have never been investigated by the government and only two have shut down after state intervention, Amnesty said.

The remaining 13 appeared to have been subjected to some level of intervention but Amnesty said it was unable to determine whether human rights abuses continued to take place in those centers.

In addition to the 53 confirmed scam compounds in 16 cities and towns, Amnesty identified 45 more suspicious locations with similar security features. It called on the Cambodian government to launch thorough and effective investigations on all of them.

Amnesty also sought urgent steps to identify and remove public sector involvement in human trafficking and to properly identify and assist victims, and provide support and remedy to those who have suffered abuse.

The rights group further urged foreign governments to press the Cambodian government to investigate and charge individuals responsible for committing international crimes of enslavement and torture and other ill-treatment.

Edited by Mat Pennington.