For the second year in a row, Cambodia failed to meet the “minimum standards” for combating human trafficking and was “not making significant efforts to do so,” the US government reported on Thursday.
The US State Department’s latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report kept Cambodia ranked as a Tier 3 country — the lowest ranking possible — meaning the government had not made “serious and sustained” efforts to eliminate human trafficking and hold perpetrators accountable.
The report highlighted the online scam industry’s prevalence in Cambodia, estimating that more than 10,000 victims are held inside scam compounds in the country.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Khieu Sopheak said that Cambodia is not concerned by the TIP report’s findings. The Interior Ministry oversees the National Police and has been the Ministry tasked with leading Cambodia’s anti-trafficking efforts.
“It is their [the US government’s] right, whatever they want to say, and we will still continue to do our work the same,” Sopheak said. “They should not be involved with Cambodia, it is a different [country] United States and Cambodia, and different territorial sovereignty.”
The TIP report notes that “increasingly, PRC-based organized crime syndicates posing as labor brokers use social media to recruit East African and Asian workers with English proficiency or technical backgrounds for promising lucrative jobs supposedly in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and elsewhere in the region.”
Traffickers have used these fake job listings to lure people from “dozens of countries” into guarded compounds known as “scam factories’” where they are forced to carry out online scams. The scams included “quota-based fraudulent sales; illegal online gambling and investment schemes; and romance scams,” the report found.
Trafficking victims were also subjected to physical abuse, sexual violence and confinement in these compounds, the report said.
“Casinos and shell companies operating in unused hotels and other rented and bespoke commercial spaces have become hotspots for this growing criminal activity—especially within remote special economic zones, border towns, and other jurisdictionally complex geographic areas known for human rights impunity and minimal law enforcement penetration,” the report found.
Vice Chairperson of the Interior Ministry’s National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) Chou Bun Eng said the US “does not have shame” and had not recognized Cambodia’s efforts to crackdown on human trafficking and scam operations over the past year.
“It should not be used as a reflection of Cambodia’s overall anti-trafficking efforts,” she told CamboJA this week. “We are working hard.”
“I want to say that there is discouragement, and if they [the US government] have determined to help Cambodia, no matter what, they have never given us comments, and we want to cooperate with [the U.S] but don’t know where are they, so no need to do an evaluation, just look at [the report] yourself,” she added.
The United States “will continue to work with stakeholders in Cambodia to prevent human trafficking,” US Embassy spokesperson Stephanie Arzate said in an emailed statement.
The Cambodian government has taken “some steps to address trafficking” such as “convicting some traffickers” and “identifying and providing services for some victims,” she said. But “law enforcement failed to effectively address forced labor in cyber scam operations.”
A Tier 3 ranking is based, in part, on “the extent to which officials or government employees have been complicit in severe forms of trafficking.” Other factors include measures taken to hold perpetrators accountable and resources allocated to protect victims. Cambodia was first downgraded to Tier 3 last July.
Under US law, countries ranked at Tier 3 may face restrictions on “some US assistance funding” as determined by US President Joe Biden, the US Embassy spokesperson stated.
The spokesperson did not say whether Biden had decided whether Cambodia would face funding restrictions as a result of its Tier 3 ranking.
Additional Tier 3 countries include China, North Korea and Russia. The only other Southeast Asian country included in Tier 3 was Myanmar.
Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia were included on the Tier 2 watchlist, meaning they could be downgraded to Tier 3 if improvements in anti-trafficking efforts were not made.
Timor Leste, Thailand, Laos and Japan were included as Tier 2 countries “making significant efforts” to comply with the report’s standards.
The US, United Kingdom, Singapore and France were among Tier 1 countries considered to “fully meet” the standards.
The TIP report noted that some countries had begun to “mobilize resources and strategies” to rescue their citizens trapped in Cambodia and other countries,
TIP identified 4,570 prosecutions across East Asia and the Pacific, resulting in 1,607 convictions. 4,635 victims were identified. This was an increase from 2021, when TIP identified 1,440 prosecutions and 1,066 convictions with 3,348 victims identified.
The report highlighted Taiwan, which earlier this year launched an anti-fraud office to fight scam perpetrators.
Last year, Taiwan “located and repatriated hundreds of individuals from cyber scam operations in Cambodia and indicted dozens of Taiwanese individuals allegedly complicit in their initial recruitment,” the TIP report noted.
In part, these efforts involved rescuing Taiwanese nationals from a compound at Bokor Mountain and prosecuting a criminal scam gang using a hotel owned by a well-connected Cambodian tycoon, CamboJA reported in February.
Since 2021, local and international media, led by news outlet Voice of Democracy, have produced dozens of reports on the human trafficking linked to Cambodia’s scam operations.
The US State Department recognized journalist Mech Dara as a “TIP Report Hero” for his investigative reports on Cambodia’s scam industry.
“Mr. Dara’s reporting on increased incidents of human trafficking in Cambodia connected to global cyber scams were some of the first in-depth investigative pieces on the subject, bringing international attention and improvements in the Cambodian government’s anti-trafficking response,” the report stated.
The Cambodia government revoked Voice of Democracy’s media license in February.
On Thursday, Dara and the staff of Voice of Democracy’s investigation “Enslaved”, which exposed the politically-connected scam industries operations in Cambodia, received the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Carlos Tejada Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting.
“Important, brave journalism on a harrowing topic,” a SOPA judge stated. “These stories traced haunting portraits of those entrapped by this system — from the sale of human beings between stark concrete buildings in Sihanoukville to a Telegram channel where deals are brokered.”
