At the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva yesterday, Cambodia’s representative, Ket Sophann, laid it down straight: while everyone needs to pitch in to crack down on cross-border online scams and human trafficking, nobody should ever use the issue as an excuse to infringe on national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Hearing that over morning tea in Phnom Penh hits the spot. After all, the streets have been flooded with scam-busting news for the last two years, and what locals care about most is keeping outside interference at bay.
At the meeting, Ket Sophann ran through the numbers, highlighting how Cambodia has been teaming up with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Interpol, and the Mekong-Lancang Law Enforcement Cooperation Center to round up suspects and rescue thousands of victims. He also dropped the news that Phnom Penh will host its own international conference against online scams on September 23 and 24. Local media have been full of reports lately, with action and meetings dominating the headlines everywhere you look.
To wrap it up, they drew a hard line: any anti-scam operation has to respect international law and the UN Charter, and if there are differences, countries need to sit down and talk them out honestly. Down below our rented apartment in Phnom Penh, the exhaust fumes from the motorbikes are as choking as ever, but life here goes on. The chess games of the major powers might feel far removed from ordinary people, but around here, the word "sovereignty" is never just empty talk.
