The news media abound with reports of Taiwanese being lured to Cambodia with promises of high-paying jobs only to be forced to become involved in illegal online gambling or similar activities, while having their movements restricted or being imprisoned, abused or sexually assaulted. Some have been “sold” to other fraud rings like livestock, while others even had their organs harvested, reports have said.
In Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that at least 220 Taiwanese have been lured to the country, and police estimate that more than 2,000 are trapped in Cambodia and Myanmar.
This situation, which police call “abominable,” threatens the personal safety of people traveling abroad, and it also involves economic and social issues that urgently need to be remedied.
The Cambodian scam is a recruitment operation by online fraud syndicates, and its roots can be traced to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The main base for fraud syndicates operating in Cambodia is the country’s biggest seaport in Sihanoukville. Named after former Cambodian king Norodom Sihanouk, the city is an important base of Beijing’s initiative. The Chinese-operated Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone has attracted investments in casinos, real estate and tourism.
As with other projects under the initiative, China initially lauded the prospects for Sihanoukville, saying that it could become the Shenzhen of Southeast Asia.
However, with Chinese increasingly moving to the city, Sihanoukville has turned into a Chinatown. It has also become a playground for criminal syndicates.
A business environment that started as a so-called “digital industrial park” has degenerated into one that is dominated by online casinos, which account for 90 percent of local revenue.
This has attracted ethnic Chinese criminal gangs to flock to the city, where kidnapping, drug trafficking and prostitution are rife. From there, the gangsters’ business interests and territory have spread beyond Cambodia to Laos and Myanmar.
At some point, Cambodian and Chinese authorities stopped issuing licenses for online casinos. This, together with the COVID-19 pandemic, caused gaming operators to pull out of Sihanoukville along with their Chinese employees, and it set the scene for fraud syndicates to move in and start recruiting personnel in large numbers.
People from Taiwan, China, and ethnic Chinese from Malaysia and the Philippines have taken the bait.
The fraud syndicates are keen to recruit from Taiwan because their main targets for telecom and Internet fraud are in China, which makes Taiwanese, who are fluent in written and spoken Chinese, the gangsters’ top choice for recruitment.
The syndicates’ mode of recruitment resembles a pyramid scheme, where those who join a fraud syndicate voluntarily are rewarded when they fulfill their “business” targets, which include recruiting more people to work for the gangsters.
Some reports say that about 40 percent of recruits join voluntarily, while 60 percent are trafficking victims. Those who are trafficked find it difficult to get out. Those whose “business performance” is not up to par or who try to escape are “sold” from one syndicate to another. There are frequent cases of inhumane treatment, including beatings, imprisonment and assaults, which have become a major cause for concern.
This ominous development in Sihanoukville is not entirely new. Examples of fraudulent overseas employment in the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates, among other places, have seen Taiwanese fall victim to fraud syndicates.
However, the latest wave of such incidents is especially shocking, with Taiwanese being trafficked from their country to Cambodia. Given that some of the cases were reported more than a year ago, the situation calls for urgent action — better late than never.
The government’s actions so far mainly fall into four categories: prevention, dissuasion, rescue and holding the perpetrators to account.
Large numbers of police officers have been dispatched to railway stations, airports and other places to increase public awareness and dissuade potential victims from being trafficked. Police officers have also been making visits to the homes of potentially affected people all over Taiwan.
In one case, police busted a gang that had trafficked 82 people. After the case was reported to police, the authorities launched nationwide follow-up investigations, and instructed Taiwanese embassies and representative offices to work with police in the respective countries to rescue and assist Taiwanese trafficking victims and deal with the criminals.
The large amount of news coverage and a range of drastic measures might lead to fewer people being tricked by bogus offers of overseas employment, but it would probably not completely solve the problem.
In view of this, there have been calls for the establishment of a dedicated inter-ministerial mechanism that would work with non-governmental organizations and other international entities, and amendments to laws pertaining to trafficking to impose harsher penalties.
Most Taiwanese who are deceived by scams or take part in them are young.
In the age of the Internet, young people are particularly susceptible to being enticed by advertisements of bogus jobs that require no experience, and offer high pay, bonuses, housing, and coverage of food and air ticket expenses.
From a wider perspective, the situation is also a result of Taiwan’s poor employment prospects and long-term low wages.
On March 21, Vice President William Lai (賴清德) spoke at a forum at National Cheng Kung University, where more than 40 percent of the students in attendance said that after graduation they would like to “tang ping” (躺平) — a phrase originating from China that literally means “lie flat” and roughly means “take it easy.” The students’ surprising response shows how widespread and serious such problems are.
An even greater cause for concern is that Taiwanese society has over the past few years become a paradise for scammers.
Almost every household has received fraudulent telephone calls. Those who are duped by scammers include everyone from the rich and famous, even including government officials, to average Taiwanese. The activities of fraudsters based in the nation are not limited to Taiwan — they also operate across borders. In the past few years, there have been many instances of Taiwanese police and foreign law enforcement agencies working hand in hand to bust online and telecom fraud syndicates.
Historic factors and tendencies of Han Chinese culture might be behind the prevalence of fraud in Taiwanese society.
After World War II, the party-state apparatus of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) not only imposed its White Terror on Taiwan, but also relied on lies, myths and a personality cult to rule the country. The poor example set by the rulers inevitably had its imitators, creating fraudsters who bedeviled society.
The fraud phenomenon is even more serious in China, where Han culture is likewise predominant. China has been called the “empire of lies,” and there is a popular saying that nine in 10 Chinese are tricksters and the 10th is learning how to be one.
As to the victims of fraud, a system of social values that stresses personal and short-term interests makes people easy to fool and hard to dissuade from being fooled.
Working abroad is not child’s play. Those planning to work overseas should first do their homework by making sure that they fully understand the social and working environment at their destination, as well as obtaining detailed and verified information about their prospective employer.
Although victims should not be blamed for their misfortune, as adults, they should be responsible for their own actions.
As 19th-century writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.”
Whether you are fooled is mainly up to you.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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