PHNOM PENH / WASHINGTON — After months of mounting reports of workers from across Asia being trafficked into Chinese cybercrime rings operating in Cambodia, the government finally conceded last week that a more aggressive approach to the problem was in order.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng said on August 22 that officials were being deployed across the country to check hotels, casinos and other establishments for potential trafficking victims, and that some suspected traffickers had already been arrested in the sweeps.
Sar Kheng’s comments came shortly after Taiwan complained that more than 300 of its nationals were being held captive in Cambodia after being lured into supposedly high-paying tech jobs, only to end up at call centers seeking to defraud Chinese targets.
But that was just the latest missive from foreign governments raising concern about their citizens being trapped in Chinese-run scams based in Cambodia.
Indonesia requested a meeting over its citizens being trafficked into Cambodia on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in early August, and then announced last week that it had repatriated 241 Indonesians trafficked by online scammers, and blocked another 214 potential victims from traveling to Cambodia.
Since the start of August, the Philippines urged Cambodian authorities to rescue four nationals being held in a casino complex in Koh Kong province. More than 40 Vietnamese nationals escaped from a casino in Kandal province and swam across the Binh…
