Over 1000 arrested in Cambodia cybercrime crackdown

"The government has observed that online scams are currently causing threats and insecurity in the world and the region. In Cambodia, foreign criminal groups have also infiltrated to engage in online scams," Hun Manet's statement, dated Tuesday, said.

The United Nations and other agencies estimate that cyberscams, most of them originating from Southeast Asia, earn international criminal gangs billions of dollars a year.

More than 1000 suspects were arrested in raids in at least five provinces between Monday and Wednesday, according to statements from Information Minister Neth Pheaktra and police.

Those detained included more than 200 Vietnamese, 27 Chinese, and 75 suspects from Taiwan and 85 Cambodians in the capital Phnom Penh and the southern city of Sihanoukville.

Police also seized equipment, including computers and hundreds of mobile phones.

At least 270 Indonesians, including 45 women, were arrested Wednesday in Poipet, a town on the border with Thailand notorious for cyberscam and gambling operations, the minister said.

Elsewhere, police in the northeastern province of Kratie arrested 312 people, including nationals of Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, while 27 people from Vietnam, China and Myanmar were arrested in the western province of Pursat.

Amnesty International in June published the findings of an 18-month investigation into cybercrime in Cambodia, which the human rights group said "point towards state complicity in abuses carried out by Chinese criminal gangs".

"The Cambodian government is deliberately ignoring a litany of human rights abuses including slavery, human trafficking, child labour and torture being carried out by criminal gangs on a vast scale in more than 50 scamming compounds located across the country," it said.

Human trafficking is closely associated with cyberscam operations, as workers are often recruited under false pretences and then held captive.