Jakarta. The Cambodian Police have rescued 34 Indonesian nationals who were tricked into forced labor after they came to the country for “high-paid jobs”, a Foreign Affairs Ministry official said on Sunday.

One of the victims managed to contact the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh on Thursday and it was learned that more than 30 Indonesian nationals were being held to work in an online scam company in the town of Poipet near the border with Thailand.

Embassy officials immediately contacted the local police to rescue all the workers, according to Judha Nugraha, the ministry’s director of protection for Indonesian nationals overseas.

“On December 9, the police rescued 31 people in addition to three others who were previously saved, so 34 Indonesian nationals have been rescued from the online scam company,” Judha told BTV news broadcaster.

“They are safe and sound.”

He said all the victims were being interrogated at the Poipet Police office and that it may take a week for the investigation to conclude before they can be handed to the Indonesian Embassy.

Since 2020, more than 1,000 Indonesian nationals have become victims of regional human trafficking networks that operate in several Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Laos, and Thailand, Judha said.

They were promised a salary of $1,200 per month without specific qualifications. The official said they only need to get a passport and travel to the neighboring country to get the job.

“Once they arrived in the destination country, they were forced to do scamming jobs and threatened if they failed to meet targets,” Judha said.

The regional network used social media platforms to offer fake job vacancies like customer service workers that don’t require specific qualifications. 

“Of 1,018 Indonesian nationals who became victims, 679 were rescued in Cambodia. It’s a wakeup call for us to take preventive measures,” Judha said.

The Indonesian Police will follow up on the investigation when all the Indonesian nationals return home, he said.

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