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Two weeks ago the Cambodian government feted international guests at a lavish event celebrating its self-proclaimed victory over cyber-scam crimes that had appeared at a significant scale in the Kingdom starting in 2021. Guests unanimously agreed that Cambodia had made concerted and successful efforts to curb the scam industry. On Thursday, however, the U.S. Department of State released the 2026 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, a public assessment containing a grading of Cambodia’s efforts to address human trafficking – particularly the human trafficking fueling that same cyber-scam industry — as one of the world’s worst, underscoring an identified “policy or pattern” of the government’s enabling or abetting human trafficking.
At first glance, this seems a remarkable gap in representations of what many consider to be the same issue. A closer look reveals a complicated reality.
Scamming Fueled by Enslaved Labor
Trafficking of foreign migrants into Cambodia for forced criminality is clearly linked to the industrial-level rise of cyber-scam centers in the country, as well documented by numerous credible researchers over the last five years. Yet it is a separate crime with a distinct population of victims. Migrant workers trafficked from as close as Vietnam and Malaysia and as far away as Colombia and Madagascar are the fuel for the scam industry; without these slave laborers, scam bosses would not have been able to scale up such massive operations that Cambodian authorities have showcased in recent days.
The 26-year-old U.S. TIP Report focuses solely on human trafficking, using international indicators of effective responses; it is not a report on other organized crime activities like cyber-scamming. The selective efforts of the Cambodian government to focus almost exclusively on closing the physical centers of scam activity are not covered by the scope of the TIP Report. What are very significant for the TIP Report are whether the government: takes proactive efforts to identify and protect victims of trafficking; ensures that victims are not further harmed and not penalized for illegal acts committed as part of their trafficking experience; and are encouraged to assist in criminal investigations and prosecutions of traffickers or scam bosses. There is no discernable and credible evidence that the government has done any of this.
Torture the Norm
To keep tens of thousands of enslave workers under control and producing lucrative results, scam bosses employed guards who regularly subjected those who tried to resist or escape to a variety of physical, sexual and psychological torture. First-hand accounts of such torture that I have received track closely with the findings of Amnesty International and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights – both of which issued reports in the last year showing a consistent pattern of interviewed victims in Cambodia who were physically or sexually abused while captive in scam centers.
Cruelty as Policy
As the government began its intensified “crackdown” on large scam centers at the beginning of 2026, it appears to have made a concerted policy shift from benign neglect of trafficking victims to malignant harm. Previous, modest police efforts to identify trafficking victims among scam center workers stopped. Instead, all became presumed offenders of Cambodia’s immigration or labor laws and were to be punished accordingly.
Under a January 2026 prakas, the prime minister made it a punishable offense for any Cambodian to offer these foreign migrants assistance. The government’s National Committee to Counter Trafficking (NCCT) and the Police’s Anti-Trafficking in Persons Department sat on the sidelines, toeing the new policy line of non-acknowledgement of human trafficking.
As the enhanced crackdown gathered steam, Senate President Hun Sen warned that it would show that “Cambodia is hell” for online scammers. Many inferred that arrests and prosecutions of scam bosses would follow, though in hindsight, the former prime minister’s message was directed at the most vulnerable, the least politically protected of actors in this cyber-scam enforcement theatre – the human trafficking victims.
Paradigm Pivot Needed
The human trafficking stain on Cambodia will continue resisting the whitewashing efforts of big publicity events and paid international lobbyists. It’s too well documented and adversely impacts too many source countries. The government has shown the ability to pivot from abject denial of an organized crime problem to its qualified acceptance; a move to now accept its sizable human trafficking challenge would not be a great leap. What’s more, its front-line responders have a proven capacity to identify trafficking victims – highlighted most recently by Interior Minister Sar Sokha’s release of a Japanese funded set of victim identification guidelines. Putting these tools to use and applying political will behind them will lead to a far more even and credible response to the organized crime threat facing the Kingdom.
Note: Mark Taylor is an independent anti-trafficking consultant and former chief of party for the U.S.-funded Cambodia Counter Trafficking in Persons project 2021-2025.
