Hun Sen’s family regime in Cambodia is accused of being complicit in cyber scams that use the victims of human trafficking to steal billions of dollars a year online.
The response from Hun Sen is a constitutional amendment designed to allow opposition leader Sam Rainsy to be stripped of his Cambodian nationality.
On June 28, Sam Rainsy made a statement which he claims explains the real reasons that have pushed Hun Sen to manufacture this year a confrontation between Cambodia and Thailand. The Thai government has been trying to curb the activity of cyber-scam compounds in Cambodia, as well as in Myanmar.
Industrial-scale cybercrime in Southeast Asia can no longer be tolerated in Thailand. The scam compounds are a major problem both for the Thai nationals who can be trapped as slaves there and for the wider Thai economy, where tourism has failed to recover to pre-Covid-19 levels.
Chinese tourists to Thailand understand the dangers of being abducted to become slaves in cyber-scam compounds, and prefer to avoid the region. Thailand needs to see the issue effectively tackled, regardless of who is its prime minister.
But on the issue of organized cybercrime, it seems that Hun Sen has nothing to say. His silence speaks volumes. Hun Sen resorted to anti-Thai rhetoric and propaganda to distract attention from the real issue. The border closures between the two countries that have taken place mean that the estimated 2 million Cambodians who work in Thailand have been paying the price for Hun Sen’s smokescreen.
Hun Sen’s response to Sam Rainsy’s statement was to tell Cambodia’s minister of justice to find a way to amend the constitution to allow selective cancellations of nationality. The Cambodian constitution states that Khmers shall not be deprived of their nationality, which is also prohibited by the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements on Cambodia.
Despite Cambodian government denials, the growing weight of evidence that the Cambodian government is complicit in organized cyber-slavery has become impossible to ignore.
Amnesty International in June became the latest organization to identify the Cambodian government as being complicit in cyber-crime. The Amnesty report says that the government has failed to investigate scam compounds, and has “acquiesced to the torture and other ill-treatment taking place at scamming compounds.” The findings were shared with the government before publication, but there has been no response of substance.
The report follows research published by the Humanity Research Consultancy (HRC) in May. The HRC report estimated that cyber-scam income in Cambodia likely totals $12.5 billion to $19 billion per year, or as much as 60% of GDP. “Transnational fraud is one of Cambodia’s many state-abetted criminal interests,” and the scale of the proceeds makes the industry crucial to the survival of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, the HRC says.
In April, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that Chinese criminal elements involved in cyber-scamming have obtained Cambodian citizenship allowing them to control property and investment holdings, including islands off the coast of Sihanoukville.
The Cambodian government has made no serious attempt to address the findings of Amnesty International, the HRC, or the UNODC, nor to stamp out cyber-scam compounds.
Hun Sen has tried for decades to silence Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile in Paris. The grenade attack on a protest march that Sam Rainsy was leading in Phnom Penh in March 1997 left 16 dead and over 100 wounded. The trial in Paris of Cambodian generals Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth for their alleged role in the attack opened in the absence of the two accused in March this year.
Hun Sen has used the country’s politically controlled courts to accumulate over 100 years of jail sentences against Sam Rainsy on various charges, as well as to dissolve in 2017 the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. Sam Rainsy co-founded the party with Kem Sokha, who was CNRP leader when it was dissolved.
Kem Sokha remains in house detention in Cambodia after conviction on a charge of treason, for which no serious evidence was ever offered.
Hun Sen meanwhile has been enacting laws designed to curtail Sam Rainsy’s political role. His legislation of 2017 made it impossible for a person sentenced to a prison term to be the leader of a political party. In 2021, he made it impossible for a person with dual nationality to hold the posts of prime minister, president of the national assembly or president of the senate.
Sam Rainsy has French and Cambodian nationality. The Cambodian diaspora is spread globally in countries where free speech is the norm, which means that the regime will never be able to silence diasporic criticism. The sooner it can find ways to listen to and work with those who tell uncomfortable truths, the better for Cambodia.
The only way that the issue of Cambodian government corruption will go away is for the government to deal with the core of the problem.
David Whitehouse is a freelance journalist who has lived in Paris for 30 years. He has both French and British nationality.
