"A spokesperson for the Thai Ministry of Information did not respond
to specific questions about civilian casualties at occupied scam
compounds, but claimed all operations were “directed strictly at
military targets.” The spokesperson claimed that Cambodian armed forces
turned scam workers into human shields by using compounds as military
bases and arms depots, launching attacks on Thailand from inside these
sites, and that Thailand only discovered that industrial-scale online
scams were operating after threats were neutralized and inspections
conducted."
"However, on multiple visits to O’Smach and Thmor Da since July 2025 we documented Thai surveillance drones closely monitoring areas with buildings densely populated by people who were clearly unable to leave. We could find no evidence that occupied compounds targeted by Thailand were being used by the Cambodian military, and no survivors interviewed said they witnessed this.
“I never saw any [Cambodian] soldier,” said Paul. “Nobody was firing back. Just the attack from Thailand.”
It was two days after Christmas, just before 7 a.m., when Paul heard the first explosion. The 50-year-old Nigerian national had struggled to make a living as an English teacher in Vietnam and applied for a well-paid admin job in Cambodia, only to find he’d been sold to a criminal group running online scams. Beaten and tortured into compliance, he had been transported from site to site as bosses raced to evade a wave of raids on the country’s brutal scam compounds – by this point estimated to hold hundreds of thousands of people who, like Paul (we have changed his name for his safety), had been trafficked into forced criminal labor in the scam and illegal gambling industry.
By December, he was in Choam, a tiny jungle outpost where Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot is buried, confined to a scam compound complex centered around a casino that once served Thai gamblers hopping across the land border. That border had been closed since June, just before fighting broke out between Cambodia and Thailand. Now, after months of fragile peace, the conflict had erupted again.
Bosses told workers not to panic; Choam was not a target. Plus, Paul had never seen any sign of Cambodian soldiers or military vehicles from the windows of his guarded office-dormitory, and by the morning of December 27, the two sides had already negotiated a ceasefire. But hours before it came into effect, Thailand attacked.
“The next thing we start hearing, seeing drones. Blasting. Bombing upon bombing,” said Paul, his voice shaking. He says he survived by sheltering in a concrete drain, while scam bosses frantically hung Chinese flags from windows to show Thai surveillance the buildings were not Cambodian-controlled, but the main hotel-casino was hit again and again.
“A lot of people died there. And on the road, strings of bullets tearing the body of people’s cars,” he said. “If a bullet can tear a car [like that], what about a human being?”
