Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra yesterday announced a series of new restrictions on Thailand’s borders with Cambodia, as the two nations continue to fall out over a border dispute.
Thailand “will boost screening at land borders and block departing tourists, saying that only students, medical patients and others who need to purchase essential goods would be allowed to enter or leave Thailand,” the Associated Press reported. The Thai army subsequently announced that it had shut down most border crossings with Cambodia, in seven of the eight border provinces.
The restrictions relate to a border dispute that has escalated since Thai and Cambodian troops clashed along an undemarcated stretch of the border on May 28, killing one Cambodian soldier. Since then, while trading blame for the border tensions, the two neighbors have taken a series of tit-for-tat retaliatory steps that have plunged relations to a decade-long low.
In tightening security at border crossings, Paetongtarn also justified the need to combat transnational crime, citing a recent United Nations report that described Cambodia as a major hub for online scamming operations.
“The United Nations has confirmed that Cambodia is one of the global centers for cybercrime,” she said, The Nation reported. “So we must step up our preventive measures, especially in border areas with persistent issues.”
The report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, published in April, identified Cambodia as one of the major hubs of the scamming operations that have proliferated across the region and beyond in recent years. These factories of fraud have relied on a large indentured workforce – mostly ordinary people who have been attracted by promises of employment, only to be kept imprisoned and forced to operate various types of digital scams, often on pain of beatings, mistreatment, and torture.
In 2023, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights cited “credible sources” to the effect that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and at least 100,000 in Cambodia “may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams.” The UNODC report claimed that scamming operations generated close to $37 billion in 2023.
While Paetongtarn did not mention it, other reports suggest that some criminal syndicates running online scam centers in Cambodia enjoy the protection or backing of businesspeople with close links to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). In September, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the tycoon Ly Yong Phat and two entities controlled by him, “for their role in serious human rights abuse related to the treatment of trafficked workers subjected to forced labor in online scam centers.” Ly Yong Phat, who also holds Thai citizenship, has served for years as a senator of the CPP and made substantial donations to party-linked charities such as the Cambodian Red Cross.
Earlier this year, under Chinese pressure, Thailand took a series of measures aimed at choking off online scam operations in neighboring Myanmar, cutting off electricity and internet supplies to parts of Kayin (Karen) State where scam operations were based. In February, it also joined Cambodian police in rescuing 215 people from a suspected online scamming operation in the Cambodian border town of Poipet, but has held off from more forceful measures.
“The criminal networks in Myanmar have resettled in Cambodia, so we need tighter measures to prevent Thais being scammed in the future,” Paetongtarn said yesterday.
The Thai leader’s announcement came at a time of crisis for her government following the leak of a recorded phone call between her and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s influential former leader, last week. The leak, during which Paetongtarn accused the head of the Thai military’s Second Army Region of supporting her political opponents, prompted calls for her resignation and led the conservative Bhumjaithai party to withdraw from her coalition, threatening its collapse. After surviving the crisis, the Thai leader has since vowed – indeed, been forced – to take a harder line in the border dispute with Cambodia.
The new Thai measures on transnational crime raise an obvious question: if the evidence for Cambodia-based transnational crime is so overwhelming, why did Bangkok not take steps to curb the issue earlier? The fact that it took a major bilateral breach for Thailand to toughen its position toward scam operations based along the Cambodian border suggests either that it previously prized the preservation of good bilateral relations over the need to fight transnational crime, or that it never took the issue that seriously to begin with.
In any event, Thailand and Cambodia appear locked into an escalatory spiral that shows no sign of ending. Yesterday, Cambodia suspended imports of Thai fuel and gas and closed border checkpoints on its side, saying that it was up to Thailand to reverse course. “You closed the border unilaterally, so you must reopen it unilaterally,” Prime Minister Hun Manet said in a speech yesterday, as per Cambodianess. “The ball is in your court. It’s up to you whether to ease tensions.”
Hun Manet also accused Thailand of exploiting border disputes and economic leverage for domestic political gain. “Our nationalist movement has intensified because certain Thai politicians are using Cambodia as a scapegoat to fuel their internal political crisis,” the Cambodian leader said. “We have exercised patience and tried to prevent the flames from spreading into our home. But Thailand has crossed a red line. They killed one of our soldiers.”
As things stand, the two nations remain far apart on even the proper venue for adjudicating the disputes – Cambodia has asked the International Court of Justice to rule on four disputed areas, while Thailand wants to settle things bilaterally – and inflamed domestic political pressure now makes it hard for leaders on either side to take a step back. The question now is less whether the issue can be resolved, and how far things will escalate before cooler heads prevail.