JakartaPost/AFP-Nov 20, 2022
Trafficked, beaten and locked up far from his family in China, Lu was one of thousands of people in Cambodia forced to operate online scams to line their captors’ pockets. COVID-19 shutdowns had left the builder out of work, so when he heard he could earn US$2,000 a month on a construction project in Cambodia, he jumped at the chance. But he soon realized he had been lured by a scamming gang to a compound in the seaside resort of Sihanoukville, along with hundreds of others. There he was forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts, trawling social media and dating apps on a hunt for victims to scam out of huge sums. People from countries around Asia – including Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh and India – have been sucked into similar operations. In August, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Vitit Muntarbhorn, said the trafficking victims “were experiencing a living hell often resulting in torture and even death”. Sihanoukville was once a sleepy resort town, but it was transformed by a vast influx of Chinese investment. Dozens of casinos sprang up in recent years, making it a hub for Chinese gamblers and drawing in international crime groups. Jeremy Douglas, of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said “criminal groups moved casino businesses online, and some then did a pivot and added online and phone scams”. Then gangs started trafficking people into the country. Douglas of the UNODC said “thousands, and some have estimated possibly tens of thousands” of people have been ensnared. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/paper/2022/11/10/inside-the-living-hell-of-cambodias-scam-operations.html.
