Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds.
The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh.
The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement in dark rooms and beatings, Amnesty International said.
Photo: Reuters
The group said its findings revealed a “pattern of state failures” that allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, identify and assist people who have been targeted, and regulate security companies and tools of torture.
Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona said the country rejected allegations of inaction, pointing to a task force led by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet formed in January and saying the report was “exaggerated.”
Cambodia was one of the victims of the scam industry and wanted cooperation rather than blame, Bona said.
While Cambodia has overseen raids that have freed some trafficked workers, Amnesty said it found more than two-thirds of scam compounds were either not investigated by police or had continued to operate even after police interventions.
Two compounds did appear to have been shut down, the group said.
During rescue efforts, police did not enter compounds, but met representatives who handed over only the person who had called for help, the group said, while some survivors were beaten by their bosses after trying to contact the police.
The government spokesman did not respond to those claims.
“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,” Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard said.
Cambodia emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a hub for the global scam industry as mostly Chinese-led criminal groups repurposed unused casinos and hotels as scam centers housing as many as 100,000 people, according to the UN.
Similar enclaves have flourished in Myanmar and Laos.
The industry in Cambodia generates more than US$12.5 billion annually — half of the country’s GDP, according to the US Institute for Peace.
The criminal gangs entice people with fake job offers posted on social media and then force them to financially exploit people online including through fake romances or “pig-butchering” schemes in which the scammer builds trust with a target before stealing their money, Amnesty said.
Nine out of 58 people caught up in the scams and interviewed by Amnesty were children, the group said, including a 16-year-old from China who was kicked and barred from leaving.
Amnesty said it had confirmed the death of a Chinese child in one compound.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS