On Friday, the government of Cambodia said that at least 2,000 people had been arrested during a repression commissioned this week by Prime Minister Hun Manet in scam centers – prison -type compounds that help groups that say they are on the work of victims of human trafficking.
Images and videos published by state -controlled media have shown that people from alleged scam plants, Cambodian troops inspecting seized electronic equipment and prisoners in plastic wrist links. Officials said held workers included Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Indian nationals.
The Minister of Information, Neth Pheaktra, told Agency France-Press, that the authorities had extended the scope of their raids to nine from the 25 provinces of the country and “will inform each fraud network, no matter where they hide”.
This decision comes after an Amnesty International report published last month said that the Cambodian government “deliberately ignored a litany of human rights violations” in the centers, “including slavery, trafficking in human beings, child labor and torture carried out by large -scale criminal gangs” in at least 53 sites across the country.
The scam centers have also appeared in the recent political tensions of Cambodia with neighboring Thailand. While closing the border passages between the two nations last month, the Thai Prime Minister now Paetongtarn Shinawatra cited Cambodia scam centers as “a hub for world -class crime and a national threat”.
Throughout Southeast Asia, scam centers generate nearly $ 40 billion in annual profits, according to a United Nations estimate.
Rong Chhun, advisor to the Power Party Power Nation in Cambodia, told RFA Khmer that the closure of the scam centers required targeting organizers, not workers.
“If we are not caloching and only sweeps the workers hired by these brains without capturing the leaders themselves, it will not take long before operations reappear,” he said.
Ny Sokha, president of Cambodgy Human Rights and Development Association, said that the Cambodian government should find and pursue those that allowed the scam centers to take root and flourish.
“If the government is really determined to eliminate games of chance and especially online scams, I think that additional surveys are necessary to discover behind the scenes. No matter how powerful or influential they can be, they must be brought to justice in accordance with the law. ”
Based on interviews with 423 former Cambodian workers in the scam, the Amnesty International report described adults and children as 14 years old that attacked with electric shock batons, detained in cages and sent to “dark rooms” for punishment if they do not achieve productivity objectives. Almost all the workers interviewed Amnesty had been attracted to deceptive recruitment tactics and false promises of legitimate jobs.
In May, United Nations managers described brutal conditions in scam centers across Southeast Asia.
“Once the milking, the victims are deprived of their freedom and subject to torture, to ill -treatment, to serious violence and to abuses, in particular blows, electrocution, lonely isolation and sexual violence. They have limited access to food and drinking water, and must support cramped and unsanitary conditions,” said their press release.
A former scam worker named you anh you told RFA in 2024 that he had accepted a job in Bavet, a Cambodian border city, after a friend has garnished a job offer. He described isolation in a closed complex, training on how to defraud the targets using social media and the deletion of a severe blow that knocked out three teeth and left it covered with eyelashes when the organizers thought they had contacted the Cambodian police.
Includes agency-France press reports.