Crackdown on Cambodian Scammers Tricking People into Forced Labour
14-10-2022
Jessica Cook
Human Rights Researcher
Global Human Rights Defence
On October 7th 2022, spokeswoman of Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lê Thi Thu Hằng announced that Vietnamese authorities were working in cooperation with Cambodia to stop people being tricked into entering the country for forced labor.
Since the pandemic, thousands of estimated victims from Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand have been targeted by online Cambodian criminal gangs who, after promising victims competitive salaries, force them into running online scams.
In cities such as Sihanoukville, which previously relied on tourism, victims are kept in former hotels surrounded by spiked fences and forced into operating online scamming schemes. Victims have said that if they refused to carry out the work, they would be beaten or electrocuted on floors designated for this effect in the hotels. If they did not meet their targets, victims have also reported being sold multiple times to different criminal gangs, with dangerous escape plans ending in beatings and death.
Although Lê Thi Thu Hằn has said that rescue and repatriation procedures are in place and local awareness campaigns have been launched in cooperation with Cambodian authorities, it is estimated that thousands of victims are still trapped.
Sources and further reading:
Rebecca Ratcliffe, R, Nguyen, N, Siradapuvadol, N (2022, October 10) Sold to gangs, forced to run online scams: inside Cambodia’s cybercrime crisis, The Guardian. Retrieved on October 14 from
Viêt Nam News. (2022, October 7), Authorities working with Cambodia to rescue Vietnamese scammed into illegal work, Viêt Nam News. Retrieved on October 14 from https://vietnamnews.vn/politics-laws/1342597/authorities-working-with-cambodia-to-rescue-vietnamese-scammed-into-illegal-work.html