PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Cambodian authorities are shutting down cyber scam compounds after months of international pressure. Officials say some 200,000 workers from 35 countries have been freed so far. The U.N. says many were trafficked. Now, thousands of workers are stranded in Cambodia with little money and no way home. For NPR, here's investigative reporter Shibani Mahtani.
SHIBANI MAHTANI: On a recent evening walk through chaotic Phnom Penh, I saw groups of former scam workers everywhere. They are camped along the riverside, in residential neighborhoods, and in the heart of the city. When I approached a group of Indonesians, they crowded around me trying to tell me their stories.
(CROSSTALK)
MAHTANI: In another part of town, I met another worker, 28-year-old Wilson. We are only using his first name because he fears retribution from the criminal syndicates that run the scam centers.
Wilson?
WILSON: Yes.
MAHTANI: Wilson, where are you from?
WILSON: I'm from Uganda.
MAHTANI: Wilson showed me where he'd been sleeping for the past two nights, a small strip of cardboard on the sidewalk under a leaky air conditioning unit.
WILSON: Previously, I was sleeping at the park. Sometimes I can sleep at the mosque.
MAHTANI: Wilson told me how he'd come to be here. He said he applied for a job last year that was advertised online. It was in Malaysia. The salary was way more than he could hope to make in Uganda, and airfare was included. When he touched down, a company driver was waiting. He took Wilson and others who had also come from Kampala and drove them nine hours, all the way to Thailand and then on to Cambodia. Wilson realized he was being trafficked.
WILSON: We thought about escaping, but now you don't know where to go because it's a foreign land. It's a little bit vulnerable because I think they might - something very bad might happen to you, you understand?
MAHTANI: Finally, the driver pulled up to a building in what looked like an office park. Inside, Wilson said the place was packed.
WILSON: Computers all over around - everywhere there were computers.
MAHTANI: And people - Chinese, Africans, Indonesians, all busy typing, luring Americans into scams. According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, the cyber scam industry managed to defraud Americans of more than $20 billion last year. Workers like Wilson fuel the industry. They're provided with scripts, fake identities and strict nonnegotiable quotas.
WILSON: And they are daily targets that you have to meet. Once you don't meet them, you are electrocuted. Some of them, you're given heavy punishments. Some members were told to jump off from a building to down - to the down floor. Some were told to kneel there all day, there all night (ph).
MAHTANI: I've spent the past five years covering this industry, and what Wilson told me was consistent with what I've heard from aid groups. Earlier this month, Amnesty International released a new report on the Cambodian cyber scam industry. It said it had interviewed 73 people released from scam compounds in the country and determined all were victims of human trafficking. But the Cambodian government has not recognized most scam workers as victims. Instead, police are detaining them for overstaying their tourist visas. I tried to visit one of the detention centers after seeing a viral video of workers brawling inside over food and other supplies. It is an immigration facility close to Phnom Penh's old airport, but guards turned me away.
UNIDENTIFIED GUARD: No, no, no, no.
MAHTANI: But here is like a - is it, like, jail or, like, detention?
UNIDENTIFIED GUARD: No can speak English.
MAHTANI: Aid workers who've communicated with people inside told me the conditions are poor, without free food or water, and there's the question of how workers will get out. In Cambodia, the government charges $10 a day for overstaying a visa. Many scam workers spent months or years in the compounds. They now essentially face thousands of dollars in fines, money they don't have. So they're essentially trapped. Cambodia's information minister, Neth Pheaktra, told me that he acknowledged the problem but said it's not the government's top concern.
NETH PHEAKTRA: We need to crack down first. That is the priority for us.
MAHTANI: Still, in a vague response, he said they're trying to find ways to help the trafficked workers.
NETH: Because some people, they are - had been cheated by the criminal, you know? So they are also victim.
MAHTANI: Human rights groups call what's happening a humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, Cambodia's crackdown on the scam compounds continues which means even more people are released out onto the streets. And the need keeps growing.
HUANG: That's Shibani Mahtani reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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