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Amnesty report reveals depth of Cambodia's forced labor scams, torture

Published: 13 Oct. 2025, 13:58 Updated: 13 Oct. 2025, 18:24

In this photo released by Agence Kampuchea Press, online scammers arrested by authorities squat in a building in Sihanoukville province, in the southwest of Phnom Penh, Cambodia on July 15. [AP/YONHAP]

Foreign nationals are being detained, tortured and forced to work in online scam compounds across Cambodia, Amnesty International said in a new report that echoes the case of a Korean student who died under similar circumstances.

The 242-page report, “I Was Someone Else’s Property,” draws on interviews with 58 victims and data from 365 additional cases between 2023 and May 2025. Amnesty confirmed 53 detention sites, describing near-identical patterns of torture and abuse that point to a systematic operation.

A 17-year-old Thai boy named Sawat told Amnesty that managers beat him, threatened to strip him and ordered him to jump off a building. Given “three choices,” he leaped from the eighth floor to a nearby building and escaped.

One Chinese victim, Jin, said guards tortured him with electric shocks for three days because he couldn’t type fast enough. “They kept shocking me until the charge ran out,” he said. Scars still mark his abdomen and arms. Twenty-seven others reported electric torture with black rods about 30 to 50 centimeters long, featuring electrodes and a button near the handle.

At least 22 facilities had “dark rooms” where detainees who tried to escape or seek help were locked up and beaten. Forty-five of the 58 interviewees said they had been tortured, directly or indirectly. Torture often took place in public to instill fear. Only one of the torture rooms Amnesty documented was soundproof.

A detention facility believed to be used by Cambodian criminal groups [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Some survivors described scenes of extreme brutality.

“They beat the Vietnamese person until his body turned purple,” said a Malaysian woman named Siti. “Then they used the electric baton. The boss told me they’d wait until another compound wanted to buy him.”

Many victims were lured by false job offers. An 18-year-old Vietnamese woman named Lisa thought she was taking a hotel job. Instead, she spent 11 months in captivity, beaten so badly she could not walk. Medical records confirmed her injuries.

Victims said they worked up to 16 hours a day running romance scams, identity theft and voice-phishing schemes. Those who failed quotas were beaten. Captors filmed them committing fraud, threatening to turn them over to police if they refused to cooperate.

Amnesty said nine minors were among the victims. Two Chinese teens, 14 and 15, were given fake adult IDs and told they would never return home if they revealed their real ages.

A detention facility believed to be used by Cambodian criminal groups [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The report links Cambodia’s scam compounds to Chinese organized crime. When Beijing banned online gambling and tightened borders during the pandemic, criminal networks pivoted to online scams, using the same casino infrastructure.

Amnesty said Cambodian officials share responsibility for enabling the abuse through corruption and collusion. One compound that held Lisa was raided by police but later reopened.

The group urged Cambodia to close all scam compounds, prosecute perpetrators and investigate the officials who allow them to operate.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY SHIM SEOK-YONG [[email protected]]