Cambodia makes 1,000 arrests in latest crackdown on cybercrime

Key Points

• Cambodia arrested over 1,000 suspects in raids across at least five provinces this week under an order by Prime Minister Hun Manet to crack down on criminal cybercrime operations.
• The detentions included large numbers of foreign nationals—more than 200 Vietnamese, 27 Chinese, 75 Taiwanese and over 270 Indonesians—and led to seizures of computers and hundreds of mobile phones.
• Amnesty International warned of state complicity in abuses at scamming compounds, citing slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture linked to these operations.
• The crackdown comes amid a border dispute with Thailand, where measures such as closing crossings and cutting electricity have been framed as efforts to combat long-standing cyberscams in Poipet.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia on Wednesday said that an order by Prime Minister Hun Manet for government bodies to crackdown on criminal cybercrime operations being run in the country had resulted in the arrest of more than 1,000 suspects so far this week.

Hun Manet issued the order authorising state action for “maintaining and protecting security, public order, and social safety.”

“The government has observed that online scams are currently causing threats and insecurity in the world and the region. In Cambodia, foreign criminal groups have also infiltrated to engage in online scams,” Hun Manet’s statement, dated Tuesday, said.

The United Nations and other agencies estimate that cyberscams, most of them originating from Southeast Asia, earn international criminal gangs billions of dollars annually.

More than 1,000 suspects were arrested in raids in at least five provinces between Monday and Wednesday, according to statements from Information Minister Neth Pheaktra and police.

Those detained included more than 200 Vietnamese, 27 Chinese, and 75 suspects from Taiwan and 85 Cambodians in the capital Phnom Penh and the southern city of Sihanoukville. Police also seized equipment, including computers and hundreds of mobile phones.

At least 270 Indonesians, including 45 women, were arrested Wednesday in Poipet, a town on the border with Thailand notorious for cyberscam and gambling operations, the minister said. Elsewhere, police in the northeastern province of Kratie arrested 312 people, including nationals of Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, while 27 people from Vietnam, China and Myanmar were arrested in the western province of Pursat.

Amnesty International last month published the findings of an 18-month investigation into cybercrime in Cambodia, which the human rights group said “point towards state complicity in abuses carried out by Chinese criminal gangs.”

“The Cambodian government is deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labor and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale in more than 50 scamming compounds located across the country,” it said.

Human trafficking is closely associated with cyberscam operations, as workers are often recruited under false pretences and then held captive.

“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’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said.

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 now led to border closures and nearly daily exchanges of nationalistic insults. Friendly former leaders of both countries have become estranged and there have been hot debates over which nation’s cultural heritage has influenced the other.

Measures initiated by the Thai side, including cutting off cross-border electricity supplies and closing crossing points, have particularly heightened tensions, with Cambodia claiming they were churlish actions of spite to retaliate for its intention to pursue its territorial claims. Thailand said its original intention was to combat long-existing cyberscam operations in Poipet.

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Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.