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Staff writer, with AFP and AP
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Cambodian authorities have arrested more than 1,000 people, including 75 Taiwanese, in raids on Internet scam centers, police said yesterday, as Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered a crackdown on cybercrime sweatshops.
The UN has described Southeast Asia as the “ground zero” of scam centers, where workers typically use romance or business cons to defraud people online of an estimated US$40 billion annually.
Manet issued a directive, made public on Tuesday, telling law enforcement and the military “to prevent and crack down on online scams,” warning they risk losing their jobs if they fail to take action.
Alleged online scammers arrested by Cambodian authorities squat in a building in Sihanoukville Province, Cambodia, on Tuesday.
Photo: AKP via AP
Over three days, authorities raided sites across the country, including in Phnom Penh, Poipet and Sihanoukville.
More than 1,000 suspects were detained, according to police reports, which continued to be announced late yesterday night.
The vast majority of the reported arrests were foreign nationals — including at least 271 Indonesians, 213 Vietnamese and 75 Taiwanese.
Many of those freed from Southeast Asian scam centers said they were trafficked or lured there under false pretences.
Abuses in Cambodia’s scam centers are happening on a “mass scale,” Amnesty International said in a report published last month.
There are at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia where organized criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labor, child labor, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery, the report said.
In March, Cambodia deported 119 Thais — among 230 foreign nationals detained during raids on alleged cyberscam centers in Poipet.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime in April warned that the scam industry was expanding outside hotspots in Southeast Asia, with criminal gangs building up operations as far as South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and some Pacific islands.
Cambodia’s latest crackdown comes in the midst of a bitter feud with neighboring Thailand, which began with a brief armed skirmish in late May over border territory claimed by both nations, and has led to border closures and nearly daily exchanges of nationalistic insults. The formerly friendly leaders of the two countries have become estranged, and there have been debates over which nation’s cultural heritage has influenced the other.
Measures initiated by Thailand, including cutting off cross-border electricity supplies and closing crossing points, have particularly heightened tensions, with Cambodia claiming they were churlish actions of spite in retaliation to its intention to pursue territorial claims.
Thailand said its original intention was to combat long-existing cyberscam operations in Poipet.
