Cambodia or SCAMbodia?

 

Tat Marina, a victim of human rights abuse - attacked with acid, before and after images.

Foreword: Jargon-Warner. “Human Trafficking” is just one of a variety of phrases that have come in to common use in Foreign Aid as have acronyms. Some of us complain about it, as along with the post-graduate level of English used, it means that what is said is not easily understood by many in the general population; and for most for where English is not their first language. The terms can be hard to convey in their languages. Human trafficking now encompasses any kind of abuse of people who have been forced or tricked in to leaving home to make money for basic needs. That is quite clear for workers including those in “modern-day slavery”. Less obvious it is also used for sex work.

A more illustrative and extended version of this blog can be accessed on my website.

https://www.johnlowrie.uk/scams-perpetrated-in-and-from-cambodia

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A regular feature in my Blogs and Twitter/X postings is how often in my 26 years of Cambodia we see the same issues cropping-up, or reappearing after we thought that the “problems” had been addressed. It's why we have perpetual Foreign Aid when of course it is supposed to be a temporary intervention.

Indeed I make the point that for some country leaders, there is a greater vested interest in not solving problems. Donor funding only comes if there are problems. Nowhere is that more obvious than in Human Trafficking where it pays both to create and facilitate the problems and to “mobilise” resources to solve them, again and again.

What has changed in recent years has been the sheer scale of these kind of criminal enterprises. For those unfamiliar with the scams, an excellent round-up is given by Danielle Keeton Olsen. There are also good features by Al Jazeera and the BBC. Danielle makes a most obvious point. It is humble “beat journalists” who have exposed these crimes, not any of the numerous expensive “technical experts” in Foreign Aid “co-operation” projects, of which there have been many in Cambodia's justice sector over the last 30 years. Of course the most expensive of those was for the Khmer Rouge trial.

Around the same time as I worked on one of my ghost-written papers for UNDP, on the subject of Impunity in Cambodia, which of course is also endemic there, I came across perhaps the earliest example of this peculiar mix of Foreign Aid funded and inspired “projects” intent on tackling a human trafficking problem, but failing miserably. It also had “unexpected” outcomes, not the intended success for “victims” nor for the Police and NGO involved.

In December 2004, in what was a break from usual official treatment of “Human Trafficking”, a raid was conducted on a brothel by the Police collaborating with a well-known NGO. As reports of that time are hard to access today, below I reproduce the Phnom Penh Post article at that time. At first it was reported that 83 “victims”, young women and girls forced in to prostitution, had been rescued, but then the next morning they were released. It was Foreign Aid in action, with donor money facilitating the operation. For good measure, and future fundraising purposes, a TV film crew was engaged to capture the raid in action. Most if not all the girls did not want to be rescued; they were soon back at work. Not back at work was the Police Chief who led the operation.

Let me summarise these essential elements from such an episode:

• A crime by international standards to be eliminated.

• Technical help and money provided by foreign donors to both authorities and an NGO to tackle the crime.

• Mysterious forces brought to bear, so that the crime is not in fact solved at all, with no obvious residual beneficial or deterrent effect.

• More than a suspicion of illicit money having been made at every stage, i.e. from prior to the crime by tolerating it; to receiving Foreign Aid money to conduct the operation, to tipping off the ring-leaders so that they would not be caught; to hiding trails that lead to those profiting or who gave permissions. etc. 

• The NGO also benefitted from the direct donor-funding as well as future donations derived from the publicity and material for fundraising campaigns.

Earlier, we had a not dissimilar case with tragic consequences for a 15 year old karaoke parlour waitress. Tat Marina was taken by a senior Government official to be his mistress. His wife was jealous. The girl was doused with acid. Although the wife was charged, to this day she and her husband have avoided any consequences for the crimes.

This case actually led to public comment by me after I failed to persuade my Cambodian human rights colleagues to correct one public statement made. They claimed that Tat Marina was also at fault for entering in to the relationship. I wrote that “she was a victim pure and simple!”

Roll on a decade to October 2013 and that same brothel-raid human trafficking NGO was suddenly propelled in to international scrutiny. Please read Newsweek or the Cambodia Daily. Basically it was found to be guilty of falsifying stories of victims, to embellish its fundraising material.

Again I felt compelled to make public comment after reading false claims such as the NGO head claiming to be an indigenous person from one of the groups I worked with, and more so that she tried to justify such falsifications to raise funds. One well-known international journalist had put his name to the NGO and later regretted it.

In the overall scale of things, these human rights abuses and those profiting from them, although appalling and all too common, are small compared to the latest human trafficking scandals, or scams, as exposed by the journalists that Danielle talks about and international ones like her picking up the story. One stark figure illustrates the scale of today's human trafficking scams. We have always known about the Black Economy but not its size. A USIP study suggested they are in the order of “$12.5 billion annually – half the country’s formal GDP”.

Takhmau "Hotel" no cars parked but it's full.

Numerous journalist investigations by now, despite well-founded fears of authorities, have uncovered buildings throughout Cambodia and neighbouring countries originally built as hotels or casinos housing the scam operations. Most trick workers to go to work for them, having posted plausible-looking legitimate jobs. Once ensnaring the workers, they confine them and force them to act as scammers. One building was actually close to us, and the Prime Minister's estate in Takhmau, literally metres from the provincial gendarmerie HQ.

The question that is always asked is “How can such crimes take place in and around local authorities and law enforcement agencies?” Most of the workers, in the order of thousands, are not Cambodians, but yet they have managed to get in to Cambodia, or been smuggled-in, without normal immigration and work permission formalities.

Even more surprising to outsiders but not those of us who have lived and worked in Cambodia is how such trafficking of people evades the local authorities. The ruling party openly boasts about its vast network down to sub-village levels. The lowest representatives, serving the party, are invariably also assistant village chiefs. In fact most can't distinguish their duties for the party from their official public service administrative roles. Let us be clear. They do not miss anything that goes on in their allotted areas. There are approximately 1,652 communes in Cambodia and 14,750 villages. Each has a village chief and several assistant village chiefs.

In November 2017, Cambodia's Supreme Court, doing the ruling party's bidding, legally banned the Opposition Party CNRP. Within hours every CNRP outpost, even in the most remote places, were visited and their sign-posts dismantled.

It proves that there is no way that any of these scams go on without blessing from upon high and that nearby local authorities, police, and courts must not interfere.

Finally I wish to make a relevant observation. There are basically two approaches to the work of countering human rights abuses. One is “constructive engagement” with authorities where donors and NGOs work directly with police and judicial authorities. The other is where NGOs keep their distance from authorities, so as not to be compromised or co-opted, and seek to elicit change externally through a variety of means. Often advocacy is tried first but when it is to no avail what amounts to “Name, Blame, Shame” is their only potentially effective resort.

My organisations and projects have tried both approaches over the years in Cambodia. Sadly neither approach has proven to work. Constructive engagement in our human rights and good governance efforts led to no discernible change in public service standards. There used to be more success with “Name, Shame, Blame” especially if you warned authorities beforehand for them to act first, but this has all but disappeared increasingly since 2011. That was when the Cambodia Government ended its regular sessions with donors as a group to monitor progress on reforms. It also marked the crackdown on all forms of #CivilSociety, closing organisations down or co-opting them. Strangely most donors have reacted mildly or not at all to such reneging on their international guarantees.

https://www.peaceagreements.org/viewmasterdocument/378

What “Human Trafficking” Foreign Aid interventions demonstrate abundantly is direct “constructive engagement” is a large waste of money. Surely that money could and should be better used to prevent people falling prey to criminals through education, advocacy and direct support to most vulnerable groups.

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".... our human rights and good governance efforts led to no discernible change in public service standards."

Cambodia NGO Law off to worst possible start.

Your mission is over -  You go!*

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Update 30 September 2024

Mech Dara, arguably #Cambodia's most prolific investigative journalist has been arrested and placed in pre-trial detention.  Whatever the charge is, in reality he is being punished for the scam exposures. Given that almost all genuine independent investigative journalists in Cambodia have worked with him, it will evoke vast worldwide attention, unwelcomed by authorities. It should also lead to donors, even those he has criticised, reconsidering their recent passivity. Equally the longstanding charge - whenever Cambodians work with foreigners or take foreigner's money - will be held against him of "betraying the Cambodian family." See also excellent piece by Jacob Daniel Sims.* 

Although it is known that the scams tend to be multinational and take advantage of laxity in international finance to control money laundering, usually it is Chinese syndicates featuring. Here, however, you can read about equally sophisticated Japanese one by Jake Adelstein.

*Jacob's in good company with Global Witness and me. "Your mission is over - You go!" His story.   

Update 29 September 2024

Interesting that within two days of posting this blog, we should see this Twitter/X posting by Cambodia's Senate.  It shows the latest about the NGO featured above and exactly just how NGOs are compromised and co-opted.  It makes a nonsense of the "Non" in Non Government organisations. Ex-PM Hun Sen and his wife who heads the Cambodia Red Cross actually started to fund Somaly Mam and AFESIP when  it was in most trouble for falsifying the victim's story.

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Phnom Penh Post story:

Anti-human trafficking NGO Afesip has called for an independent investigation in to a counter-raid on their shelter that freed 83 detainees "rescued" from a suspected brothel.

On December 7, police arrested eight suspected pimps and detained female staff working at Chai Hour II hotel in Phnom Penh, but the following day a mob attacked an Afesip shelter with rocks, breaking down the gate and freeing the women. The incident has attracted international attention, with the United States criticizing the Cambodian government's suspension of General Un Sokunthea, the authority behind the raid.

Sokuntha and her deputy at the Ministry of Interior's Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection Department (AHTJPD) were suspended on December 13 by an unsigned order of general commissioner of national police, Hok

Lundy. "Obviously, any punitive measures against her would call into question Cambodia's commitment to fighting human trafficking," said Richard Boucher, spokesman for the US Department of State.

The United States gives $2.6 million in funding to Afesip through its aid agency USAID. Helene Flautre, president of the sub-commission on human rights for the European Parliament lent her support to Afesip in a December 15 letter, saying she would pressure the Cambodian government to investigate the incident.

When the Post asked Sar Kheng, co-Minister of Interior, about the scandal as he left a conference on good governance and poverty reduction, he said the matter was "under investigation." Phnom Penh municipal police spent hours questioning Afesip staff over the past two days as part of "unofficial" fact finding and the government has promised to set up an inter-ministerial committee to investigate, but Afesip said a neutral inquiry was necessary.

Afesip has alleging that organized crime syndicates are applying pressure on the government to stop an investigation on the attack.

"The police said if we go ahead [with future raids] we will be dead," said Pierre Legros, regional director of Afesip in Southeast Asia, at a press conference in Bangkok. A preliminary report by Afesip in September had found evidence of prostitution and virginity selling at Chai Hour II, prompting an investigation by the AHTJPD, which organized search warrants for the raid.Police - accompanied by staff of Afesip and a French TV crew raided the 80-room, multi-story complex around 4:30 p.m. on December 7.

It was the biggest raid ever conducted by the anti-trafficking department, both in terms of the number of women involved and political influence of the owners, said several sources with knowledge of raids in Cambodia. Only one of the 83 girls was underage and no evidence of human trafficking was found, said Afesip. Most of the women were placed underthe temporary custody of Afesip and taken to a shelter, aside from a group often who remained overnight at AHTJPD headquarters after questioning. The suspects were also held at the AHTJPD's offices but were released the next morning. The Post could not confirm who gave the order to release the suspects.

All the women, as well as nine other residents, were at the shelter at noon the next day when a group of around 30 men and women arrived and began throwing large rocks over the wall, demanding to be allowed in. Some witnesses said members of the group were wearing military or bodyguard uniforms, including one man with a holstered pistol, but the three hotel workers who spoke to the Post said the mob consisted of family and friends.

Two policemen from the Ministry of Interior stationed at the shelter were unable to stop the attack and the group broke down the gate, taking all 91 girls and women away in cars. The Post spoke to three women involved in the raid, who denied they were forced to work as prostitutes and said underage girls were not employed at Chai Hour II.

They said that they helped friends and family break down the gate of the shelter in order to escape the custody of Afesip and around 30 of their colleagues had since returned voluntarily to work.

"I feel very hurt and plan to sue Afesip because they libel us as a butterfly that finds the food at night," said Tai Chakriya, 25, using a euphemism for sex work. A group of around 50 Chai Hour II workers held a brief demonstration outside the US Embassy on December 11, protesting against the raid. Sam Leang, a manager at the hotel, admitted customers had sex on the premises and that condoms were provided, but said that it was an individual choice of the 160 female staff.

"I want to ask Afesip, if I did wrong, illegally, why did the girls that work here come back after the raid?" asked Leang, who denied his hotel was a venue for virgin selling, forced prostitution, or sex with underage girls.

The Cambodian Women's Crisis Center (CWCC), which also runs shelters for women, said brothel owners occasionally come to collect their workers, but usually leave once police arrive. The attack on Afesip was "totally unacceptable" and would be a "trial case" for the anti-trafficking department, which had gained respect in the sector over the last two years, said Oung Chanthol, director of CWCC."I think it's a failure of the government in protecting the service provider and protecting the women who are exploited," said Chanthol.

(Additional reporting by Marwaan Macan-Markar, IPS news service in Bangkok)