Cambodia Targets Workers in Crackdown on Scam Centers

Thousands are arrested in compounds that rights organizations say are populated by victims of human trafficking.

By RFA staff

Cambodia’s government on Friday said that at least 2,000 people have been arrested in a crackdown ordered this week by prime minister Hun Manet on scam centers — prison-like compounds that aid groups say run on the work of human trafficking victims.

Images and videos released by state-controlled media showed people running from alleged scam-center sites, Cambodian troops inspecting seized electronic equipment and groups of detainees in plastic wrist ties. Officials said detained workers included Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Indian nationals.

Information Minister Neth Pheaktra told Agence France-Presse that authorities had expanded the scope of their raids to nine of the country’s 25 provinces and will “dismantle every scam network no matter where they hide.”

The move comes after an Amnesty International report released last month said that the Cambodian government was “deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses” at the centers, “including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale” at at least 53 sites across the country.

Scam centers have also figured into Cambodia’s recent political tensions with neighboring Thailand. As she closed border crossings between the two nations last month, the now-ousted Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra cited Cambodia’s scam centers as “a hub of world-class criminality and a national threat.”

Across Southeast Asia, scam centers generate nearly $40 billion in annual profits, according to a United Nations estimate.

Rong Chhun, an adviser to the opposition Nation Power Party in Cambodia, told RFA Khmer that shutting down scam centers would require targeting organizers, not workers.

“If we only target and sweep up the workers hired by these masterminds without capturing the leaders themselves, it won’t be long before the operations reappear,” he said.

Ny Sokha, president of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, said the Cambodian government must find and prosecute those who have allowed scam centers to take root and flourish.

“If the government is truly committed to eliminating gambling and especially online scams, I believe further investigation is needed to uncover those behind the scenes. Regardless of how powerful or influential they may be, they must be brought to justice in accordance with the law.”

Based on interviews with 423 former Cambodian scam-center workers, the Amnesty International report described adult and child workers as young as 14 being attacked with electric-shock batons, being held in cages and being sent to “dark rooms” for punishment if they failed to meet productivity targets. Nearly all of the workers Amnesty interviewed had been lured using deceptive recruitment tactics and false promises of legitimate jobs.

In May, United Nations officials described brutal conditions at scam centers across Southeast Asia.

“Once trafficked, victims are deprived of their liberty and subjected to torture, ill treatment, severe violence and abuse including beatings, electrocution, solitary confinement and sexual violence. They have limited access to food and clean water, and must endure cramped and unsanitary living conditions,” their statement said.

A former scam-center worker named Tu Anh Tu told RFA in 2024 that he accepted a job in Bavet, a Cambodian border town, after a friend vouched for an employment offer. He described confinement in a gated compound, trainings on how to scam targets using social media, and enduring a severe beating that knocked out three teeth and left him covered in lash marks when organizers thought he had contacted Cambodian police.

Includes reporting from Agence-France Presse.