Cambodia allowing ‘slavery and torture’ in scam compounds, report says

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The job looked too good to be true. It was.

Lisa, an 18-year-old Thai woman, was searching for work after graduating from high school and came across an ad for an administrative role in neighbouring Cambodia, which promised a high salary and featured photos of offices at a hotel complete with a swimming pool.

But when she travelled to the border to be picked up by her new employer, Lisa was bundled across a river to a compound where armed guards forced her and other trafficked people to carry out phone and online scams. When she tried to escape, she was beaten on the soles of her feet with a metal pole.

Lisa’s story is one of dozens in a new report by Amnesty International, which accuses the Cambodian government of “ignoring a litany of human-rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale in more than 50 scamming compounds located across the country.”

All of those interviewed by the rights group were given pseudonyms “for security reasons,” Amnesty said. The Globe and Mail could not independently verify their stories, but they match similar testimony to that of other survivors who have gone public.

“Deceived, trafficked and enslaved, the survivors of these scamming compounds describe being trapped in a living nightmare – enlisted in criminal enterprises that are operating with the apparent consent of the Cambodian government,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnès Callamard.

“Jobseekers from Asia and beyond are lured by the promise of well-paid work into hellish labour camps run by well-organized gangs, where they are forced to scam under the very real threat of violence.

“Amnesty’s research reveals the horrifying magnitude of a crisis the Cambodian authorities are not doing enough to stop. Their failures have emboldened a criminal network whose tentacles extend internationally, with millions of people impacted by the scams.”

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Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The government has previously rejected similar allegations.

For years, rights groups, regional governments and international law enforcement agencies have been warning about the proliferation of scam call centres across Southeast Asia, where criminal gangs rely on corruption and occasionally outright anarchy to operate, as in lawless areas of what is known as the Golden Triangle between Laos, Thailand and war-torn Myanmar.

While some action has been taken, and Bangkok in particular has cracked down heavily on scam compounds along the Thai-Myanmar border, the effects have been limited, as gangs move to other parts of the region, and their tactics are increasingly being taken up by copy-cats, with reports of scam compounds popping up in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Mexico, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The work of these groups is facilitated by extensive money laundering operations, many of them reliant on cryptocurrencies. According to a recent UNODC report, many of these companies are also based in Cambodia but have extended their tentacles into other jurisdictions.

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One major crypto marketplace used by scammers, Huione Group – which was targeted for sanctions in May by the U.S. – had subsidiaries all over the world, including Vancouver-based Huione Pay Inc., registered as a company in British Columbia in 2021. At its height, the UNODC estimated, Huione was processing tens of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency transactions, for almost a million users and thousands of interconnected vendors.

Much of the money being laundered originated in scam compounds, where victims of trafficking were often tortured and kept against their will.

According to Amnesty – whose researchers visited almost a hundred locations across Cambodia, where barbed wire, surveillance and armed security could be seen – such compounds were able to operate openly as the government turned a blind eye.

“The Cambodian authorities know what is going on inside scamming compounds, yet they allow it to continue,” said Amnesty International’s regional research director Montse Ferrer. “Our findings reveal a pattern of state failures that have allowed criminality to flourish and raises questions about the government’s motivations.”

This included compounds that continued to operate even after being raided by local police, or after the authorities have been under pressure to rescue some victims by other countries. China in particular has leaned on governments across Southeast Asia to retrieve its citizens and stamp out call centres targeting Chinese nationals.

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“Meanwhile, the authorities have targeted others speaking out about scamming compounds,” the Amnesty report said. “Several human-rights defenders and journalists working on the issue have been arrested, while the news outlet Voice of Democracy was closed in 2023 in apparent retaliation for its reporting on the scamming crisis.”

Earlier this year, Cambodia established a task force to combat online scams, but human-rights advocates say little has changed on the ground.

Ms. Ferrer said Cambodia needed to do more, including protecting jobseekers in the region from being trafficked in the first place, and shutting down known criminal scam compounds.

“Under international human-rights law, the Cambodian state has a duty to ensure that no one is held in slavery or servitude or required to perform forced labour,” Amnesty said. It is also bound to investigate alleged acts of torture.