SIHANOUKVILLE
October 10, 2022
1,500 foreigners await deportation at Sihanoukville
As many as 1,500 foreigners are awaiting deportation at Preah Sihanouk province, according to National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT).

The NCCT has revealed that it had inspected 2,760 foreigners from 14 different nationalities at 10 locations in Sihanoukville, and among them 1,946 foreigners had valid passports, while 1,512 had no work permits and they were fined before being allowed to leave the company premises.

At the same time, the police have prepared evictions for 685 people of 10 nationalities and 920 people of 23 nationalities who are staying in the eviction preparation office.
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501165244/ ... noukville/

Cambodia repatriates 78 Vietnamese tricked into illegal business
By Phuoc Tuan October 11, 2022 | 10:40 pm PT

They were handed over to officers at Moc Bai International Border Gate after being saved thanks to joint efforts of Cambodian authorities and the Vietnamese Embassy.

All of them had been tricked to come to Cambodia and forced to work in casinos and for illegal companies near the Cambodia-Vietnam border. It was not clear how long each has been in Cambodia.

Border guards have identified the returnees and completed procedures for them to return to their hometowns.

The verification process, however, found one to be a suspect wanted internationally for smuggling. The suspect has been handed over to Ho Chi Minh City police.

Cambodian authorities have been ramping up efforts to stamp out human trafficking in the country.
Thanks to the campaign, border personnel in Vietnamese localities have repeatedly received repatriates from Cambodia.
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/cambo ... 22386.html

Trafficking Rescues Reach Oddar Meanchey
2 min read
Mech Dara
| Wed Oct 19, 2022 6:27 pm
Authorities have rescued 75 foreign nationals from a border town in Oddar Meanchey province following raids against online scam operations in Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh and elsewhere — though a local police official argued the work being done with forced labor was “normal.”

Chuon Suor, deputy Oddar Meanchey police chief, said on Wednesday that authorities had raided one site on a hill in O’Smach, at the border with Thailand, and removed 75 foreign nationals, mostly Vietnamese. The raid happened on Saturday.

The plea for rescue had come through a police hotline, he said. Rescues have increased since Interior Minister Sar Kheng began to take calls for rescue through his Facebook page. Previously, human trafficking victims had posted desperate pleas to the pages of Prime Minister HE and Preah Sihanouk governor Kuoch Chamroeun.

Suor would not say how long the foreign nationals had been in O’Smach, but said they were now sent to Siem Reap to be deported.
Asked whether the raided location was a casino, he said: “Sometimes they rented a building and sometimes they were involved inside one. They worked normal [jobs] and it is nothing.”

[However] Chou Bun Eng, permanent vice-chair of the National Committee for Combating Human Trafficking, could not be reached on Wednesday but told local news outlet Tnaut that the recent raid was at “O’Smach Casino*” and the 75 foreign nationals from Vietnam, China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia.
* https://vodenglish.news/trafficking-res ... -meanchey/

Follow up to above post ^^

171 abused Vietnamese workers rescued from Cambodia return home
By Phuoc Tuan October 22, 2022 | 08:59 pm PT

The Vietnam Consulate General in Cambodia has coordinated with Cambodian authorities the return of 171 Vietnamese citizens rescued from a gambling firm in the neighboring country.

The Vietnamese citizens who were coerced into working for an online gambling company in Samrong City, Oddar Meancheay Province, were rescued by Cambodian authorities between October 11 and 17 upon the request of the Consulate General of Vietnam in Battambang Province.

After receiving the rescued Vietnamese citizens, authorities at the Xa Mat International Border Gate Saturday coordinated with police in the Vietnamese border province of Tay Ninh to review and verify their identities, background and complete other procedures before returning them to their respective localities.
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/171-a ... 26858.html

Six Malaysians safely return to Malaysia after rescued from job-scam in Cambodia
By The Online Citizen -
27/10/2022

Six Malaysians trapped in Cambodia safely arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA 2) at about 12am early morning today (27 Oct).
According to a live stream on Malaysia International Humanitarian Organisation (MHO) official Facebook page, these six victims arrived back home after successfully being rescued from illegal detention by a human trafficking syndicate in Cambodia.

Four of them are from Sabah and the other two are Sarawakians. Some have already been stranded there for seven months, illegally detained in one building, and forced to work 12 hours or more daily in scamming activities.

“We tried to run away, but were unable to find any viable escape method, it was very difficult since the building was heavily guarded with many security officers, from 1st floor to 7th floor. There are at least 10 guarding our working place.” One of the victims told the media.

The victim from Sabah said the building was filled with different companies conducting similar scamming activities. He claimed that he witnessed some victims beaten and electrified.

“We were lucky not to get beaten, but we were being continuously guarded. Our hands need to be on the keyboard all the time or else, we will be electrified. ”

As Cambodian authorities beefed up their raid on illegal detention sites — such as where the four Sabah victims were situated at, the scam syndicate moved the victims to stay overnight in a hotel in Sihanoukville before transiting to another location place to take shelter from the raids.

The victims managed to make use this opportunity to contact MHO, and immediately escaped from the hotel the next morning.

“or else we will not know where we will be transferred to the next day.” said the victim.

He added that they were fearful of the prospect of being blocked or captured in the process of their escape, as their fate will turn worse or even be killed by the criminals.

Escaping along with the four Sabahans who escaped from the hotel, was a Nepali who was also illegally detained.

“We couldn’t just leave him behind so we brought him to escape with us together.”

According to the victim, there are still 20 more Malaysians still detained by the company that they were with and he believes that the syndicate’s boss would likely tighten security to prevent others from escaping.
https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2022/1 ... -cambodia/

MALAYSIA
Job scam victims relate experiences in Cambodia
30-10- 2022 06:56 PM
JOHOR BAHRU: Their movements were not only monitored but controlled 24 hours a day for seven Malaysians, including a woman, all aged between 18 and 34, from Johor. The employment seekers fell victim to a job scam syndicate in Cambodia.

One of the victims, who wanted to be known as Wan, 34, said once they arrived in Cambodia, they were placed for five months in what was believed to be the syndicate’s operations centre, a hotel in Sok, Phnom Penh.

He said that before leaving for Cambodia, they were offered jobs by a local agent at a casino with a lucrative salary of as much as US$1,100 a month. However, upon arrival they were forced to work as scammers for a cryptocurrency operation masterminded by a Taiwanese.

“We were attracted to the salary, and were offered a job as servers at a casino but when we arrived there, we were told to work as scammers.

“If we refused to sign the contract (as scammers) for six months, we were asked to pay RM15,000 per person to return home, so we were forced to sign the contract,“ he said at a press conference held at the Larkin State Legislative Assembly representative’s service centre, here, today.

Wan, from Kampung Melayu Paloh, Kluang said for the five months in Cambodia, they were not paid their salaries. However, they were not harmed by the syndicate.

“However, some previous victims had said that they were beaten and had guns pointed at them...so for the duration there, we did not protest but followed whatever instructions given,“ he recalled.

According to Wan, he and six others had been planning for a month to escape before contacting the Malaysian International Humanitarian Organisation (MHO) for help and managed to flee from the syndicate’s clutches by giving an excuse of wanting to go out to the hairdresser.
https://www.thesundaily.my/local/job-sc ... LE10057804

‘I was a slave’: Up to 100,000 held captive by Chinese cybercriminals in Cambodia
(Vincent Thian / Associated Press)
By David PiersonStaff Writer
Nov. 1, 2022 2 AM PT
BANGKOK — The hustle started like it often does, with a post on Facebook promising job seekers generously paid customer service positions in Cambodia, no experience necessary.

Soraton Charehkphunpol, a Thai cook scraping by in a restaurant in Bangkok, couldn’t resist the offer to earn more than double his $470 monthly salary.

Late one evening last year, after another grueling shift, Soraton answered the ad. Within hours, a man arrived at his door to take him to the Cambodian border city of Poipet.

It wasn’t long before Soraton realized he had made a mistake. Dumped in a high-rise building above a casino, he was turned over to mobsters who seized his passport and put him to work bilking gamblers on a sham sports betting app.

“The bosses said if I tried to leave they would just sell me to another gang,” said Soraton, a rail-thin 20-year-old from the central Thai city of Nakhon Pathom. “That’s when I realized I was a slave.”

In a dystopian nightmare come to life, the Cambodian government has given Chinese crime syndicates free rein to bring in tens of thousands of foreign men and women who — according to human rights organizations and their own accounts — are held captive to work in crowded cyber scam mills.

Lured by the promise of legitimate employment, they are instead forced to run online and telephone rackets targeting people around the world with gambling, money lending and romance schemes, to name a few. Other scams have included fake real estate developments and bogus initial coin offerings.

“The criminals are limited only by their imagination,” said Jason Tower, an executive at the United States Institute of Peace and an expert on transnational Chinese crime syndicates. “These are sophisticated schemes.”

Workers who meet their targets are rewarded. Those who fail are tortured, abused and sold like chattel to other gangs on private messaging apps such as Telegram. Reports of murder, depression and suicidal ideation are rampant.

The syndicates run their operations not unlike private companies trying to motivate a sales force. The big difference: Employees aren’t allowed to leave.

“Instead of getting fired for poor performance, you get physical punishments — forced push-ups and squats, tased, beaten, deprived of food, locked up in dark rooms or worse,” said Jacob Sims, country director for International Justice Mission Cambodia, a rights group that has helped rescue more than 100 victims. “On the other hand, those who consistently meet or surpass their targets are rewarded with more freedoms, food, money and control over other victims.”

The duped workers come from across Asia, including China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many cite the economic fallout from the pandemic as a motivating factor for taking a job in Cambodia.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/st ... n-cambodia

Cambodia’s modern slavery nightmare: the human trafficking crisis overlooked by authorities
Despite promises by government to eradicate trafficking rings, people are still being sold in Cambodia and forced to run online scams
Lindsey Kennedy, Nathan Paul Southern and Huang Yan
Wed 2 Nov 2022 23.59 GMT
Last modified on Thu 3 Nov 2022 04.27 GMT

At 3.28am on 29 June 2021, Xu Mingjian crept out of a dorm room inside a gated compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and made his way to the second floor, where his friend, another victim of trafficking, was waiting. The two had hatched a desperate plan to escape the modern slavery nightmare they’d been in since Xu was sold to an online scam company in the same building three months earlier, believing a well-paid data entry job awaited him.

They jumped from the balcony onto the first floor of the building next door, hoping to climb down to the ground and run. But Xu landed badly, injuring his spine.
“It was so painful and I couldn’t stand up. My friend ran away and left me when he saw I was injured,” he says. “The managers thought I’d die so they didn’t take me back into the building, they just stood watching and laughing at me.”

Xu crawled to a road, where a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver found him and drove him to a hospital, which then transferred him to the capital, Phnom Penh. A doctor there suggested he call Chen Baorong, the Chinese founder of a volunteer organisation dedicated to rescuing people like Xu who had been duped into travelling to Cambodia’s crime-ridden casino towns with the promise of work, only to find themselves trafficked into forced labour, scamming strangers online.
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... uthorities