An aerial view of the KK Park complex in Myawaddy Township, eastern Myanmar, seen from Mae Sot, Thailand. (Photo: AFP/Lillian Suwanrumpha and Greg Baker)

On July 31, 2026, Myanmar’s Pyidaungsu Hluttaw enacted the Anti-Online Scam Law. Framed as a decisive crackdown on cyberfraud syndicates, the new legislation risks institutionalizing victim criminalization by failing to distinguish between willing fraud operators and human trafficking victims. Naypyidaw's approach echoes a broader regional strategy of targeting scam workers to signal compliance abroad, failing to tackle the invisible architecture sustaining fraud operations, consisting of armed groups and militias, transnational organized crime networks and corrupt elites.  

Online fraud schemes are driven by transnational organized crime syndicates operating in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar. The opaque, transnational nature of this phenomenon makes it difficult to precisely identify its scope, but a February 2026 United Nations report estimates the trafficking of over 300,000 workers originating from 66 countries, the vast majority of which directed to the Mekong sub-region, which reportedly hosts 74% of scam compounds globally. Once lured to scam facilities through false work promises, victims are stripped of their documents and coerced to reach strict quotas through online extortion, financial fraud and impersonation scams that in 2025 alone caused an estimated of total loss between USD 88.3 and 114.1 billion across East and South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Failure to reach nonnegotiable quotas exposes workers to debt bondage, psychological and physical torture, including sexual abuse, isolation and starvation. 

Trafficking victims who commit unlawful acts in the course, or as a consequence, of being trafficked are protected by Article 14 of the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, which seeks to ensure that victims are provided with protection, not punishment. However, due to ASEAN's foundational principle of state sovereignty, the Convention only provides that Member States shall consider not holding victims criminally and administratively liable, leaving plenty of room for states like Cambodia and Myanmar to prosecute victims. In 2025, the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime and ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights jointly issued the ASEAN Guideline on the Implementation of the Non-Punishment Principle for Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Persons, highlighting the importance of upholding the Non-Punishment Principle – regardless of the severity of the crime committed – to protect the human rights of trafficking victims while responding to transnational crime. Through its fifteen recommendations, the Guideline provides a practical approach for ASEAN Member States to strengthen or incorporate the application of the Non-Punishment Principle within their national frameworks; however, it remains a non-binding instrument with only recommendatory force. The lack of a binding mechanism to hold Member States accountable for the prosecution of trafficking victims creates a legal gap which only worsens the humanitarian crises linked to online scam operations in Southeast Asia, fueling a vicious circle of violence and displacement.

Cambodia’s approach

While Myanmar's Anti-Online Scam Law is the region's newest legislative attempt, Cambodia offers the most developed case study of the humanitarian costs of victim criminalization. Between July 2025 and August 2026, the Cambodian government’s large-scale operations reportedly shut down over 600 suspected scam operations centers nationwide. Following the raiding of cyberscam compounds, local authorities announced the arrest and jailing of approximately 3,500 suspected operators for the financial crimes committed while held captive. Additionally, foreign nationals trafficked to Cambodia remain in an administrative legal limbo, detained for visa overstay and facing hefty fines amounting to thousands of dollars.

The detainment and prosecution of coerced and complicit scam workers alike falls short of the standard set out by the ASEAN Guideline on the Implementation of the Non-Punishment Principle for Protection of Victims of Trafficking in Persons, under which trafficking victims coerced into committing unlawful acts should not be prosecuted neither criminally, in this case for their financial crimes, nor administratively, for visa overstay. The government’s criminalization of trafficking victims has created – according to Amnesty International's Regional Research Director, Montse Ferrer – a humanitarian crisis on the streets, made up of deeply traumatized survivors in need of psychological and financial support, who are instead finding themselves targeted as illegal immigrants, stranded in a foreign country without the means to leave or earn a livelihood.

Despite the Cambodian government’s claim that large-scale online scam operations have been completely eradicated, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Tom Andrews, warns that they continue to proliferate, changing locations and modalities. This is facilitated by widespread corruption that informs scam operators of upcoming raids and shields high-ranking officials and elites from law enforcement. Ultimately, these crackdowns appear less as a genuinely action against the underlying architecture sustaining cyberscam operations and more as a compliance signal abroad.

Myanmar’s approach

Myanmar offers no comparable government tally to Cambodia's centrally reported figures, as a majority of the industry sits in territories outside of the junta’s control. As a consequence, the last country-specific assessment credibly estimating the size of this phenomenon consists of an August 2023 United Nations report, which estimated over 120,000 people forced into online scam work in Myanmar, against 100,000 in Cambodia. Since then, the industry has been expanding uncontrollably, aided by regulatory impunity and weak government oversight. Further proof includes satellite evidence that identified 25 scam sites newly constructed between late 2025 and June 2026 along the Myanmar-Thai border. The authorities’ previous attempts at cracking down on this growing phenomenon have mostly consisted of scattered raid operations that "displaced and dispersed" – rather than dismantling – the industry. For instance, the raid of Myawaddy scam compounds in late February 2025, which allegedly freed 7,000 workers brought no fundamental improvement to the condition of trafficking victims, as the workers were later found to still be stranded in makeshift camps waiting for repatriation.

Against this backdrop, the new Anti-Online Scam Law reads as the region's toughest legislative response, establishing harsh legal penalties for cybercrime offences, including the death penalty for individuals found employing violence, torture or abduction to coerce others into committing cyberscam operations. The legislation also establishes sentences of 10 years to life imprisonment for persons found guilty of operating “online scams”, which the Draft Law published on May 14, 2026 defines as the use of telecommunication networks, internet networks, or other digital technology to deceive, defraud, or illegally obtain money or valuable property from others. Crucially, this broad definition fails to distinguish between willing operators and human trafficking victims coerced into committing fraud. The only explicit reference to coerced labor appears in the Formation, Duties, and Powers of the Central Committee section, which establishes the duty to cooperate with international organizations, civil society, and relevant stakeholders to assist, rehabilitate, and repatriate foreign nationals who are victims of forced scam labor. While this section outlines administrative assistance, the law altogether fails to establish formal victim status or guarantee a Non-Punishment Principle. This lopsided design and vague wording thus risk institutionalizing victim punishment, as International Organization for Migration Director General Amy Pope warns “People trapped in scam compounds are victims of trafficking, forced to commit crimes through violence, threats and coercion. They deserve protection, not punishment”.

Cambodia's experience suggests what may await Myanmar's trafficking survivors once enforcement begins: mass arrests, criminal and administrative charges, and no support for those left stranded in the legal limbo. Myanmar's harsher punishments, including a death penalty provision, coupled with an opaque industry still expanding despite years of raids, risk triggering a far deeper humanitarian crisis than observed in Cambodia. The integration of a Non-Punishment Principle within Myanmar’s new Anti-Online Scam Law is thus essential to ensure that it becomes a tool to hold cyberfraud syndicates accountable, and not yet another mechanism for punishing trafficking victims. International and regional bodies, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar and on contemporary forms of slavery, as well as the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crime, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, and the ASEAN-Australia Counter Trafficking program should press Naypyidaw to embed this Principle within the Central Committee’s existing duty to assist, rehabilitate and help repatriate trafficking victims by pushing for a presumptive victim status and required victim screening before charges are filed. The International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime should continue providing post-rescue psychological and financial support and negotiate humanitarian corridors with neighboring countries. Finally, journalists, advocacy networks and civil society also have a duty to closely monitor the situation through victim-centered reporting that exposes performative crackdowns and holds states accountable for sustaining the underlying architecture of organized cybercrime networks.