Donations to the Cambodian Red Cross linked to online scam centres
The charity, which has had a long and close connection with the Cambodian government, has received millions of dollars from entrepreneurs linked to online scam centres in Southeast Asia, some of whom sanctioned by Western governments. In the meantime, Myanmar and Thailand continue operations against online scams and human trafficking under pressure from China.
Phnom Penh (AsiaNews) – The Cambodian Red Cross (CRC) has received more than US$ 7 million from companies and entities linked to the online scam hubs scattered across Southeast Asia, this according to an investigation by Radio Free Asia (RFA), which has long reported on links between the charity and the Cambodian government.
One need only look at the CRC’s Facebook page to see several posts thanking wealthy individuals for their donations, some of which made on a regular basis.
Some of the donors, like businessman and Senator Ly Yong Phat, have been sanctioned by Western governments for overt ties with human trafficking.
Other major donors include Chen Zhi, president of Prince Group, which donated more than US$ 2 million between 2021 and 2024.
Despite the denials by the group's spokesman, some investigations have documented cases of torture and abuse at Chen’s businesses.
RFA also identified other “benefactors”. One is Try Pheap, a tycoon under US sanctions who has donated US$ 300,000 per year since 2021; another is Li Tao, a Chinese businessman, also under sanctions by Washington for human rights violations, who donated US$ 1.9 million in four years; and Chen Al Len, the director of the K.B. Hotel, a notorious human trafficking site sanctioned by the United Kingdom, which has made donations of different amounts since 2021, from US$ 10,000 to US$ 100,000.
Such donations by alleged criminals are meant to paint them in a positive light, while allowing them to curry favour with Cambodia’s ruling party, this according to Jacob Sims, an expert on the Southeast Asian human trafficking crisis.
“It’s abundantly clear that the CRC is only one of many different mechanisms for elite patronage being paid into a profoundly corrupted system,” Sims told RFA.
The Cambodian Committee of the Red Cross is now chaired by former Prime Minister Hun Sen's wife, Bun Rany, but the link between the ruling family was consolidated in the 1990s, when some tycoons (oknha in Cambodian) began to make donations to the national committee to obtain protection and favours from the government.
RFA's investigation shows that the system of human trafficking linked to online scam centres is an institutionalised process that enjoys the protection of some anti-democratic regimes.
The extent of this trafficking network in Southeast Asia emerged in 2020. According to United Nations estimates, about 100,000 people have been reduced to conditions of modern slavery in Cambodia alone, and 120,000 in Myanmar.
People are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work as online scammers or fraudsters against citizens of Western countries. Some victims have managed to escape over the years, reporting abuses of all kinds.
Slave workers have their passports taken, then they are held in compounds and residences; the best known in Cambodia are in the coastal city of Sihanoukville, often with the approval of local police and Chinese businesses that bankroll infrastructural construction in the city.
The same situation has developed Myanmar after the February 2021 coup d'état that saw the overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, sparking a brutal civil war whose end is not in sight.
Myanmar’s military junta is militarily backed by China, but is increasingly struggling against the resistance, which includes ethnic militias, losing control over the illegal trafficking along the border with China and Thailand. With Thai help, China has been trying for months to put a stop to the situation.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Karen Border Guard Force (KBGF) announced that it can transfer at least 10,000 victims of human trafficking to Thailand. The KBGF is an ally of Myanmar’s military, and has long managed and protected the illegal trafficking that takes place in Myanmar’s Myawaddy district, another hub that hosts online scams.
Last week, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (a KBGF splinter group) announced the expulsion of Chinese nationals involved in online scam centres from the territories it controls.
KBGF’s illegal activities have funded construction in a city like Shwe Kokko, carried out by Yatai, a company owned by She Zhijiang, a Chinese entrepreneur who obtained Cambodian citizenship in 2017 and was arrested in Thailand in 2022, and is now waiting to be extradited to China to answer charges of running illegal gambling operations.
Recently, under pressure from China, Thai companies that signed energy supply contracts with various entrepreneurs such as She Zhijiang have cut off power to Myanmar companies that, among other things, host online scams.
Tens of thousands of Chinese citizens have also been freed in the last year. The latest operations to free workers have revealed that the victims of trafficking come from dozens of different countries.
Last week, Myanmar transferred 260 people of at least 20 different nationalities to Thailand, 138 from Ethiopia.
The chief of staff of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, Major Saw San Aung, said he did not know “how they got here”. “We are continuing the search of forced labour, and we will send them back,” he added.
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12/03/2024 17:51
24/07/2023 19:18
