PHNOM PENH: Cambodia has failed to dismantle much of its online scam industry despite a year-long crackdown that authorities said would eliminate it, according to an Amnesty International report that challenges official claims of success.
The London-based rights group said it identified 86 scam compounds operating across Cambodia as of April, up from 53 a year earlier, and found evidence of state intervention at only 24 sites during the government’s campaign. That contrasts with official statements that authorities had taken action against more than 250 scam centres nationwide.
The findings cast doubt on government assertions that the industry had been significantly weakened. Senior Minister Chhay Sinarith told Bloomberg in February that online scam activity had been reduced by half and the problem would be resolved by April. Officials later reported thousands of arrests, prosecutions and deportations linked to the crackdown.
"Cambodia’s crackdown has failed in key areas, both in investigating and shuttering some of the most well-known compounds across the country and in protecting and assisting the victims who escaped,” Amnesty said in its report, released Monday.
Chhay Sinarith, who is also chairman of the Secretariat of the Commission for Combating Technology Crimes, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The effort targets a cyberfraud industry that has turned parts of Southeast Asia into hubs for online scams generating billions of dollars annually. Cambodia, alongside Myanmar and Laos, has become a hub for scam compounds where trafficked workers are often forced to carry out fraud schemes targeting victims around the world.
"We’re still understanding most of their crackdowns as being quite performative, where they’re perhaps alerting the key people within the scam centers before a raid, so they’re not actually taking down the key actors,” said Julia Dickson, an associate fellow in the Intelligence, National Security and Technology Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"We have seen a lot of movement within Cambodia, perhaps shifting more from these big compounds in border zones to smaller compounds that are harder to track within urban areas or simply relocating elsewhere.”
While Amnesty acknowledged that thousands of people appear to have escaped or been released during the campaign, it said many were subsequently treated as immigration offenders rather than victims. The group said survivors frequently relied on charities, local residents and foreign embassies for food, shelter and assistance in leaving the country.
Prime Minister Hun Manet launched the nationwide campaign in July, describing scam networks as a threat to Cambodia’s legitimate economy. Amnesty said the effort produced some results, but concluded that systemic failures, inadequate investigations and weak victim protection allowed much of the industry to survive.
There are also signs that some people who escaped the compounds or were released are being re-trafficked inside Cambodia, Dickson said.
"You’ve seen people flood the streets in Cambodia as the raids are happening, all these people don’t have anywhere to go, don’t have any way to get back, so they end up, some willingly, often not willingly in another compound.”
Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst with the human trafficking and migrant smuggling unit at Interpol in Lyon, France, said there were signs Cambodia’s scam compounds were splintering into smaller operations, including in residential areas.
"Has the crackdown led to an end? It does not appear so,” she said. "The scam centres are still around. They’re popping up in other places.”
"Shutting down a scam centre does not necessarily entail a dismantling of the infrastructure that is behind it,” she added.
"The risk of revictimisation and being trafficked again is there, especially in the context of crackdowns like this.” - Bloomberg.
