For the second year in a row, Cambodia failed to meet the “minimum standards” for combating human trafficking and was “not making significant efforts to do so,” the US government reported on Thursday.

The US State Department’s latest Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report kept Cambodia ranked as a Tier 3 country — the lowest ranking possible — meaning the government had not made “serious and sustained” efforts to eliminate human trafficking and hold perpetrators accountable.

The report highlighted the online scam industry’s prevalence in Cambodia, estimating that more than 10,000 victims are held inside scam compounds in the country.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Khieu Sopheak said that Cambodia is not concerned by the TIP report’s findings. The Interior Ministry oversees the National Police and has been the Ministry tasked with leading Cambodia’s anti-trafficking efforts.

“It is their [the US government’s] right, whatever they want to say, and we will still continue to do our work the same,” Sopheak said. “They should not be involved with Cambodia, it is a different [country] United States and Cambodia, and different territorial sovereignty.”

The Government of Cambodia does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so, even considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, if any, on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Cambodia remained on Tier 3. Despite the lack of significant efforts, the government took some steps to address trafficking, including investigating, prosecuting, and convicting more traffickers, creating a special working group to investigate credible reports of large-scale cyber scam operations involving indicators forced labor, and identifying and providing services for more Cambodian trafficking victims. However, corruption and official complicity in trafficking crimes, including by high-level senior officials, remained widespread and endemic, resulted in selective and politically motivated enforcement of laws, and inhibited law enforcement action during the year.
Authorities did not investigate or hold criminally accountable any officials involved in widespread, credible reports of complicity, in particular with unscrupulous business owners who subjected thousands of men, women, and children throughout the country to human trafficking in cyber scam operations, entertainment establishments, and brick kilns. Law enforcement did not effectively address forced labor in cyber scam operations.
The government persistently failed to equitably screen or provide justice in trafficking crimes for foreign workers removed from cyber scam operations; it did not proactively screen them for human trafficking indicators. As a result, authorities did not provide or refer foreign potential victims of cyber scam operations to services, inappropriately penalized them for crimes committed as a direct result of being trafficked, including through holding these victims in indefinite detention until they paid bribes to police for release or their foreign embassy funded their deportation.