Cambodia Makes 1,000 Arrests in Latest Crackdown on Cybercrime
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 toward 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 pretenses 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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