The Khmer Movement for Democracy (KMD) welcomes a report authored by Jacob Sims and published by the Humanity Research Consultancy in May which identifies Cambodia as the epicenter of organized cyber-criminality in Southeast Asia.

The report, Policies and Patterns: State-Abetted Transnational Crime in Cambodia as a Global Security Threat, finds that Cambodian state institutions “systematically and insidiously support and protect the criminal networks involved in transnational fraud and related human trafficking.”

The report is a “wake-up call for global law enforcement agencies and the international community,” said Mu Sochua, president of the KMD. “There can be no business as usual with a regime which feeds off the proceeds of forced criminality.”

“The international community must impose sanctions on leading players found to have benefited from organized cyber-crime in Cambodia,” Mu Sochua said.

The report is based on interviews with 51 scholars, journalists, diplomats, civil society members, and survivors of forced criminality. KMD notes the list of 28 names published on page 50 of the report who were recommended by the interviewees for indictments, sanctions, visa bans, and/or other accountability measures.

It would not suffice to say that these people have connections with the Cambodian regime. In many cases they are officially part of the regime, including Neth Savoeun, deputy prime minister, Sar Sokha, minister of the interior and also a deputy prime minister, and Ly Yong Phat, a permanent member of the ruling party’s central committee.

“The threat which these senior Cambodian officials pose to international security should be urgently addressed with every legal tool available,” said Mu Sochua.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet is preparing to visit Japan on 28-31 May. The KMD urges the Japanese government to raise the inter-related issues of cyber-criminality, government complicity and the assault on civil society in Cambodia.

The KMD further welcomes a joint statement from UN special rapporteurs Tomoya Obokata, Siobhán Mullally and Vitit Muntarbhorn after the HRC report.

The statement from the special rapporteurs makes clear the connection between organized cyber-crime and the constriction of civil space in Cambodia. The regime’s undermining of civil society, the statement notes, hampers victim protection efforts,  denies access to justice and prevents whistleblowing.

The KMD believes that only a democratically elected government which is accountable to the Cambodian electorate will be capable of the institutional reforms needed to eradicate organized cyber-crime in the country.