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In March 2020, the Cambodian authorities made it clear that they will not risk COVID-19. The tourist visa was suspended. Land borders are closed and citizens are stranded. Curfews and domestic travel restrictions have emptied the kingdom’s world-famous tourist archaeological sites and closed down once bustling nightlife venues.
For nearly a year, this vigilance has made Cambodia a success story for COVID-19. As of January this year, the country has no record of deaths due to the coronavirus, and only 463 positive cases, 86% of which are imported cases. These cases are controlled by the arrival isolation system called “waterproof”.
But in February, just a few months before the vaccine was fully introduced, a series of community outbreaks spread from casino towns and hotels. Within three months, Case rise From a few hundred to tens of thousands.
The largest outbreak — known as the “February 20 Incident” — seems to have been triggered by the cross-border transportation of sex workers for wealthy clients.
Contract tracking showed that 32 people in the N8 nightclub in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, were infected with the virus. Here, they had contact with four Chinese citizens who tested positive when they arrived in Cambodia, but they were photographed by security cameras. They bribed the way to leave the quarantined hotel for what the government-affiliated Khmer Times called a “pre-arranged tryst.” “Meet.
It is not yet clear how many locations these women went to after absconding, but the Ministry of Health has identified a series of related websites, mainly high-end serviced apartments, hotels, KTVs (usually karaoke bars that double as brothels), massage parlours and private establishments. international School.
A few days after the incident on February 20, the police raided the NagaWorld Casino, where 11 staff members tested positive.
A couple in Phnom Penh looked at the Sokha Hotel on the other side of the river, where four women paid the quarantine fee in February [Lindsey Kennedy/Al Jazeera]According to the Khmer Times, all four women travelled in and out of the country by private jet, although there is no record of private jet in and out at Phnom Penh Airport during this period. NagaWorld’s legal team told Al Jazeera via email that the organization arrived in Cambodia via Asiana Airlines on February 7 and departed on a Korean Air flight to Seoul on March 5.
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I don’t know why the Cambodian government has adopted a discredited policy against quarantine violators and imposed hefty fines and up to 20 years of imprisonment. Security guards who bribe are fined. In an email, Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia region, described the guard as a “scapegoat.”
When asked if these women were trafficked, General Chay Kim Khoeun, a spokesperson for the National Police General Council, told Al Jazeera: “No cases of human trafficking were reported” in the incident on February 20, but the investigation revealed some COVID-19 cases before the outbreak. Was related to human trafficking.
He said that the broker was arrested for arranging the transit of women and issued stricter border control measures to prevent smuggling and illegal transit, “in response to human trafficking cases during the spread of COVID-19.”
In May and July, during raids on illegally operated secret nightclubs in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville, more than 100 Chinese and Vietnamese nationals were also arrested on drug trafficking and related charges. However, other nightlife venues claim to be restaurants but remain open.
The series of outbreaks have also highlighted the dark links between human trafficking, corruption and Cambodia’s huge casino industry, which should be dedicated to foreigners.
Cambodia has about 150 large casinos located on the border of Thailand and Vietnam, as well as Sihanoukville and Koh Kong, the investment and tourism centers of Phnom Penh and China. These facilities mainly cater to tourists from Thailand, China and Vietnam, and their respective governments prohibit them from gambling at home.
Many operate within “special economic zones”: specific areas on Cambodian territory where laws and regulations governing other areas of the country do not apply.
The most notorious ones are related to large-scale criminal activities, from drug smuggling to money laundering and even murder.
A 2019 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) highlighted the connection between Southeast Asian criminal groups and casinos, and pointed out that human trafficking cases were found in Poipet, a casino town on the border with Thailand, in 2015 and 2017. In 2018, in Sihanoukville, a beach resort and major casino center, dozens of Chinese citizens were arrested for cracking down on cross-border prostitution gangs.
Two men walk past a casino in Sihanoukville, Cambodia [Lindsey Kennedy/Al Jazeera]Cambodians are prohibited from gambling in casinos, but despite international travel restrictions, most people continue to operate during the pandemic. NagaWorld, a large casino and hotel complex located in the heart of Phnom Penh, boasted that it will achieve a full financial recovery in the first quarter of 2021.
Their success continues to attract workers from neighboring countries.
In April, 11 Chinese citizens were arrested for smuggling 112 Vietnamese citizens and several Chinese men into the country to work in the border casino zone between Takeo and Svay Rieng. A driver working at the Prey Chak casino in Kampot province was sentenced to jail for trafficking in Vietnamese nationals, while a two-star general in the Cambodian army was stripped of his title for selling foreigners into Sihanoukville during the national travel ban .
In September, 18 Malaysian nationals claimed that they were tricked into paying more than US$43,000 to an agent who promised to work in a Cambodian casino. In June of this year, the Vietnamese embassy issued a warning to citizens that human trafficking gangs were enticing Vietnamese to pay for lucrative casino jobs in Cambodia, only to find themselves engaged in arduous forced labor.
Gamble
The casino center has been at the core of almost all COVID-19 outbreaks in Cambodia.
The daily breakdown of data analyst and COVID-19 researcher David Benaim revealed that viruses unrelated to the February 20 outbreak appeared in Sihanoukville and casino towns on the border with Vietnam.
According to reports, COVID-19 has also been reported in casino staff in Poipet and Kandal in the southern part of the capital. On May 31, 56 employees of the Kampot Casino located on the Vietnamese border tested positive for the virus. As of June 6, almost every Cambodian province that has experienced a major outbreak—one case in every 1,000 people—has at least one large casino.
On June 7, after leaked information indicated that Poipet’s Star Complex Casino prevented employees from conducting COVID-19 tests, a police raid found that at least 13 employees were infected with the virus.
Government authorities responded to individual cases by ordering the temporary closure of casinos, but Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in late June that as long as they take sufficient measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, casino operations can resume.
At the same time, according to the civil society organization Adhoc, cross-border trafficking in and out of Cambodia has increased-members of the border police are increasingly involved in promoting trade.
Michael Brosowski, founder of Blue Dragon, a Vietnamese anti-trafficking NGO, said his organization has seen an increase in the number of reported cases of Cambodian women being trafficked to the Vietnamese border during the pandemic. More than doubled. He pointed out that domestic traffickers are also targeting younger and younger girls, and that 13- and 14-year-old Vietnamese children were tricked into working in KTV after promising to work in industrial areas and restaurants.
He said the pandemic is like “a grenade fired in an already turbulent situation.”
Although some human trafficking networks are affected by border closures and travel restrictions, Itayi Viriri of the International Organization for Migration emphasizes that many people have never relied on regular immigrants from the beginning. “Corruption and bribery also help to keep them alive,” he said, while predatory traffickers are increasingly taking advantage of job insecurity, financial difficulties, weakened law enforcement, and children’s increased dependence on the Internet. In March alone, about 100 brokers were arrested for smuggling individuals across the border from Thailand and Vietnam.
The casino continues to be built in Sihanoukville, which is a popular destination for Chinese tourists [Lindsey Kennedy/Al Jazeera]As the number of cases increased, returning rural migrant workers and urban sex workers assumed most of the responsibility.
Polet Pech, head of the Phnom Penh-based Women’s Solidarity Network (WNU), said that throughout the pandemic, sex workers in the capital faced increasing social exclusion and difficulties, becoming scapegoats for community transmission and were barred from receiving government support. .
After the incident on February 20, the government ordered the temporary closure of KTVs that have not yet been reopened. Pech said that workers in these locations have not received warnings of closure – and few have employment contracts.
She explained that only 8% of sex workers have the official “IDPoor” card needed to obtain financial support and free medical care. Many people also sold mobile phones in exchange for much-needed cash, which prevented them from registering for vaccinations or issuing emergency food kits to people in the city’s “red zone”, which were strictly locked down during April and May. Many former KTV employees are now pushed into the dangerous situation of street prostitution.
With the surge in COVID-19 cases and death toll in Southeast Asia, the Cambodian government announced travel restrictions and lockdown measures on July 28, which may push many people Plunge into deeper poverty.
However, Cambodia’s casino industry is gaining momentum.
A week after 11 employees tested positive, Phnom Penh-based NagaWorld paid shareholders a dividend of US$81 million. Although it raised $200 million in investment in June, it is now preparing to lay off 1,300 of its 8,000 employees, and its compensation is only a small part of the contractual layoffs. Bond investment analysts said the casino’s “top-line numbers look great.”
High gamblers, human smugglers, and brokers who sell labor to casinos may already bet on human lives, but here, it seems that the house always wins.
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