November 20, 2024

The international community is at last starting to show greater understanding of the threat posed by cyber-slavery compounds in Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. 

There are two classes of victims of modern cvber-slavery. First are those who are tricked into working for online scam operations, usually in the belief that they are travelling to take up a legitimate job. They soon find themselves trapped in closed compounds with their travel documents confiscated. They are forced to carry out investment or romance scams online, with violent punishment being meted out if they fail to hit targets. 

The second class of victims are those who fall for the online scamming and part with their money. The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) estimates that receipts from cyber scamming in Cambodia alone exceed $12.5 billion per year, and stand at around half of the country’s official GDP.

Until now, those tricked into forced criminality in Southeast Asian compounds have been mainly Chinese. The most lucrative online pickings for the cyber-scam operators are to be had by tricking affluent English speakers online, so young, educated English speakers willing to take a chance on working in Southeast Asia are essential. 

India has recently started putting up warning signs at airports warnings its nationals against accepting jobs in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar with unaccredited organizations. Such warnings are an essential step which need to be adopted in English-speaking countries everywhere. 

A crucial point is that the young victims are often not told that their real destination is in Cambodia. The recruiters will offer jobs in somewhere that sounds safer, such as Thailand. A group of young 

Indians who thought they were going to work in Bangkok ended up being tortured in a scam center in Poipet, Cambodia. 

Governments globally must take a more active role in protecting their nationals, and understand that rogue regimes such as in Cambodia and Myanmar are not going to do it for them. No-one flies to Southeast Asia on the strength of an online job advert. There are always local traffickers involved in the country of origin of the cyber-slaves, and dismantling these gangs needs to be given much higher priority. 

But such preventative efforts will never crack the problem while a Cambodian government which is actively complicit in cyber-slavery remains in place. The Cambodia Counter Trafficking in Person (CTIP) project reported in October that many cyber-scam centers in Myanmar have relocated to Cambodia in 2024 because Cambodia is seen as the safest operating environment. The CTIP estimates that there are now 350 scamming centers in operation in Cambodia drawing on the forced labor of at least 150,000 people. 

Yet no-one has ever been prosecuted for running a Cambodian cyber-slavery compound. Ly Yong Phat, a member of the central committee of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and a senior adviser to Hun Sen and Hun Manet, along with his LYP business conglomerate, have been sanctioned by the US for using forced labor for cryptocurrency scams. So it’s not surprising that the Cambodian police view their job as publicly refuting specific cyber-slavery cases, rather than actively investigating them. 

The ultimate beneficiary and guarantor and cyber-slavery in Cambodia is Hun Sen, the dictator who continues to control the country, with his son in place in the prime minister’s office. An essential step towards to cyber-slavery in the region must involve the international isolation of the Cambodian regime. The government must choose either the path of organized crime or the path of international legitimacy. It should not be possible to pursue both paths, but that it is exactly what the Cambodian government is currently able to do. Further sanctions against members of the Cambodian government who benefit from cyber-slavery must be imposed in a co-ordinated way by the international community. 

A full solution to the regional problem will need the US and China to set aside their competing interests and work together to tackle a scourge which affects many of their citizens, as slaves in the Chinese case, and as financial victims of fraud in the US.  

Please find the article as PDF file here

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