I got a lot less snarky in my responses to scam text messages when I learned about the forced labor aspect. I just block the sender and go on, versus trying to bait them and waste their time.

To what extreme do you take this? Would you rather be killed than scam someone? That’s a principled stance if so, but I’d personally rather you try to scam me if the alternative is you being beaten up, or worse

> I personally have no sympathy for these people whether or not they're victims

That’s an interesting moral philosophy. Do you think that no one ever deserves sympathy for something they were forced to do? If a Mexican drug cartel threatens to kill someone’s entire family if they don’t perform a reprehensible act, no one should feel the tiniest bit bad for them if they don’t stand on principle?

I assume you don’t actually think that, but when you hear that people are being kidnapped, trafficked abroad, and forced to work in clandestine Burmese call centers, what do you think their options are?

The 24 Nuremburg defendents all held high level leadership positions and were hardly representative of the rank and file "just doing their jobs".

The freer you are, the easier it is to stand on principle. When your life or your freedom is at stake, you will do things that you never thought possible. We are genetically programmed to preserve our own lives, as well as those of our loved ones, at just about any cost.

I don't want somebody being held against their will and forced to do a "job" to be beaten because I wanted to fuck with a scammer.

>I personally have no sympathy for these people whether or not they're victims. You get a choice in life to stand on your morals or allow them to be eroded. If you choose to do something you know is wrong then you are no better than any other person who knowingly commits such acts.

That's nice, but if someone points a weapon at me and tells me to rob people over the phone i'll probably do it.

In many US jurisdictions you'd likely be able to argue a duress defense in this case.

https://www.egattorneys.com/duress-defense

Were? they still are. It's not even a small amount there are thousands of people at these centers.

also this isn't a "lawless" region that OP is talking about they are in city centers in Cambodia and the Cambodian police and government officials are all getting paid off to let them operate freely.

it really is disgusting to see this level of corruption and that its going to have long term economic impact on Cambodia and Cambodians abroad.

Makes you think that idea of spreading democracy is not just a cover for power struggles, but something really important

Makes you wonder if not blowing the country to bits and helping the Khmer Rouge gain power would have been better for its development

Cambodia is not really a democratic country. It still an Autocracy.

And for some reasons there are Americans thinking they were wrong going to Vietnam

Indeed. I spent a while in Vietnam and it was a regular occurrence of news stories about locals being rescued from all sorts of situation, not just scam centers - casinos, massage parlors.

The stories ranged from video of people running away from these places to escape, to Vietnamese police bribing people back to Vietnam who had been lured with the promise of a good job.

Cambodia really is the Wild West of this stuff.

Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. "less-policed" is the entire country. ~50 years since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide.

Vietnam was by far my favorite of the three and the contrast between the three countries is stark.

> Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people.

Probably should also include which country is responsible for the current condition of the country.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to...

Content: "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević."

I had to read up, and...my goodness.

Apparently the US bombed a neutral Cambodia secretly to incite Vietnam's neighboring countries and put pressure on them, killing 30k to 150k civilians. This caused unrest, and gave way to Khmer Rouge to sieze power, using "defense against the US" as propoganda.

And we dropped more bombs on poor Laos (mostly because pilots weren't supposed to land back at base with bombs still on board) than on Japan and Germany combined... they estimate it will take about 600 years to removed all the unexploded cluster bombs and children regurly get maimed and killed by them (they look like tennis balls).

The Chin, Hmong, and Lao are some of the nicest people you will ever meet, too.

Reading stuff like this and Cambodia, I truly wonder why so many Americans still hide behind "freedom" for every single atrocity their government representatives have done.

Why can't Americans (and to some extent Europeans) just come out and say, "Yea, we are often assholes and we have self interests. That's why we do these atrocities. It's not because of 'freedom'"? At least be honest.

Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you do the right things nor does it mean you are fighting the right cause.

As an American (3rd generation), I assure you that many of us are firmly aware that this nation was built upon violence and committed violence on a grand scale. In my personal opinion, we have done a lot of good, but also a lot of bad. A lot of our statecraft was learned from the British and the French. This did not really change until after the southeast Asia debacle and things started to shift to a less cynical and more nuanced view of the world.

Unfortunately, 9/11 slammed us hard back into being angry and defensive. COVID just made it worse...

It will probably be a generation until we calm back down. Or Putin/Xi dies. Whichever comes first.

> Just because you have freedom of speech

Well, they're working on that one...

Pol Pot probably was more proximally at fault.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

It's a giant mess. I don't think Pot would have gained the support/power that he did without the US indiscriminate bombing. Much like the creation of ISIS and the strengthening of the Taliban in Afghanistan, it turns out people don't like the people dropping bombs on them. They'll turn to whoever is fighting the bombers.

The US involvement in Vietnam would have already been over before the uprising of Pot had Nixon and Kissinger not skuttled peace talks to help Nixon get elected.

Iraq, for example, didn’t turn into Cambodia and conditions pre-ISIS in Syria more directly fostered its creation.

See a discussion of “proximate cause.”[1]

[1] https://legalclarity.org/what-is-the-difference-between-dire...

It’s not like Cambodia was a stable democracy before the bombings.

The Khmer Rouge and other opposition groups were fighting the government in an armed conflict since 1950. The Khmer Rouge controlled almost half of Cambodia’s territory 10 years before the bombing.

In the grand scheme of Cambodias civil war, the US bombing didn’t play that big a role at all.

You can point the fingers everywhere, you can also say the French were at fault because of the core of the Khmer Rouge group were scholarship students who were sent to France to study socialism, came back with that education and used to to establish the Khmer Rouge.

It's not exactly true, Pol Pot went to France on a scholarship to become an electrical engineer. When he came back to Cambodia, he worked as a literature teacher.

The ideological content of the Khmer Rouge is very poor overall, and is a mix between nationalism and communism aiming to "clean" the nation from western influences. Which is kind of ironic given Pol Pot's background.

While true, that's where he picked up his political views, which became radically communist.

I know I'm wonderful at parties but I catch so much shit, here but not especially, when I point out the incredible wrongs and the sheer body count of America's colonialist projects here into the modern day.

It really cannot be overstated. The developing world is still developing thanks to it's own institutional issues, to be sure, as everywhere else on the globe struggles with, but America has never had a larger, stronger America come in and just fuck it right up for literally no reason apart from larger geopolitical games.

Early ancestors a few tens of thousands of years ago had a genocide only operating model that wiped out a majority of males for a couple millennia. Crazily enough, apparently Slavery was an innovation in that era.

Wait until you learn about East Timor. “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens is a short, devastating read on the man, the monster.

I think PolPot has more responsibility for this.

He's responsible, but the question is if he'd have gained the power and support without the US's meddling.

Pol Pot was not alone, revolutionary movements breed on fertile grounds.

How does Laos compare?

Sorry, I can't say. I always stayed near the water for work as a dive master or ESL teacher, so I never made it to Laos.

The Cambodian civil war only ended in 1991. To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism. YC news moderation standards is quite something these days. For actual foreigners’ opinions of Cambodia after having lived there long term, watch this YouTuber’s videos: Austin Tukwa @austintukwa https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhN9L6mXjPI

Vietnam’s repeat-visitor share is around 5%. The desperation I see is the large amount Vietnam tourism astroturfing. https://www.duongbusinessconsulting.com/international-busine...

> To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism.

"The USA is full of people who believe in freedom of speech". Racist?

You are using a straw man argument to bait the other person to debate the merit of free speech or the honor of the USA. You failed.

Positive stereotype of positive beliefs is not racism because it does not promote discrimination or hatred toward that group. Have you tried reading a book lately?

How does calling a country full of people who are sad and desperate for a better life discriminate against them? This is the same kind of rhetoric I would hear someone use as an appeal to helping them. Hearing about these things makes me more kind and empathetic to the people involved - not less. It feels like you are trying to do a good intentioned thing here but maybe it’s misaligned to more malicious folks compare with how most people read these comments

> Negative stereotyping of a whole group is racism

I’m not in Cambodia. The only way I can relate to its people is by stereotyping.

Saying we can’t negatively stereotype basically says you can only have positive opinions about this country or you’re a racist, which is absurd.

> Saying we can’t negatively stereotype basically says you can only have positive opinions about this country

This logical fallacy is a False Dichotomy (also known as a False Dilemma or Black-and-White Fallacy).

This fallacy occurs when an argument incorrectly presents two opposing options as the only possibilities, when in fact a wide range of other options exist.

How it applies to the statement: The statement "Saying we can’t negatively stereotype basically says you can only have positive opinions about this country" creates a false choice between:

Option A: Engaging in negative stereotypes. Option B: Only having positive opinions. This completely ignores the vast and reasonable middle ground, which is legitimate, specific criticism.

> This logical fallacy is a False Dichotomy (also known as a False Dilemma or Black-and-White Fallacy)

Fair enough. Saying "negative stereotyping of a whole group is racism" also permits neutral stereotyping not being racist.

That said, don't you see the problem with ruling out any negative stereotype? Populations have characteristics. Those characteristics can be judged positive, neutral and negative from a given perspective. Not every perspective that judges a population is racially animated. (And not all judging from afar is wrong. To say otherwise dismisses history and anthropology--which study people separated from us by the much-less bridgeable time--as practical fields.)

Dostoevsky and Turgenev consistently portrayed the imperial Russian peasantry in a baseline state of misery. That wasn't racism. It was--based on what I know--an accurate description of their state. I'm (in part) ethnically Indian. I don't think someone saying that Indians were despearate and divided when the East India Company landed would be speaking racially insensitively.

> * To call a country full of any type of people is the definition of racism*

This is bullshit. This kind of stuff isn’t black and white. Am I racist for calling Monaco a place full of rich people? Of course not, I’m describing the situation people are in, not their characters. Same holds here.

From the Desperate Housewives of Orange County, I present to you the distinction between desperate and poor. Your lack of grasp of the difference or willful disregard of it conveys a careless attitude toward a serious debate. No amount logical reasoning will convince the likes of you otherwise. But, I will try.

A glass is 3% full of wine is a valid statement but a strange and deceptive one to make. It is a semantic game. The parent comment and your statement is negative stereotyping of a whole country based purely on anonymous internet users’ opinions. Negative stereotyping a whole group of people is racism because it promotes discrimination or hatred toward that group. Prove the preceding statement wrong. Try. You are suggesting that desperate and poor are always the same. Also, the racist implication is that desperate people will do “bad” things since the original article is about crime. The common Thai nationalist’s racist attack on Cambodia and its people is to call the whole country poor and full of beggars.

For your information, people can be relatively poor and contently hopeful. No, the whole country of Cambodia is not full of poor or desperate people. Also, poor people maybe desperate sometimes but not always. Cambodia has come along way in bringing many of its people out of poverty. Go ahead prove me wrong with logic and reasoning. Or you can just hold on to your racist believes.

[flagged]

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> I did not call him a racist. I said his statement could be understood as racist

This postmodern redefinition of racism really needs to be discarded. It’s done so much damage by giving actual racists cover, since if everyone is racist then racism isn’t a problem.

Negative racial stereotype as a definition of racism is the classical definition of racism. There is nothing postmodern about it.

> Negative racial stereotype as a definition of racism is the classical definition of racism

It wasn’t racial stereotyping. It was stereotyping a country’s population as sad and desperate. Saying X country’s quality of life sucks isn’t racist.

If they’d said or implied Cambodian Americans are also sad and desperate, sure. But they didn’t.

Replying to JumpCrisscross response below:

>> Negative racial stereotype as a definition of racism is the classical definition of racism

>It wasn’t racial stereotyping. It was stereotyping a country’s population as sad and desperate. Saying X country’s quality of life sucks isn’t racist.

>If they’d said or implied Cambodian Americans are also sad and desperate, sure. But they didn’t.

This is a distinction without a difference. A negative stereotype about the people of a country is a stereotype about that country's dominant ethnic group. Their geographic location is irrelevant.

By this logic, saying "All Japanese people are [X]" is not a racial stereotype as long as you're only talking about the ones in Japan. It only magically becomes a racial stereotype when they are "Japanese Americans." This doesn't make sense.

There's a fundamental difference between:

Criticizing a state: "Cambodia's economy is struggling and its government is corrupt." Stereotyping a people: "The people of Cambodia are inherently sad and desperate." The original comment did the latter. That is, by definition, a negative ethnic stereotype.

Could you please stop perpetuating this flamewar? Other commenters are doing it too, of course, but you've done it by far the most. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

I totally get that you have good reasons for feeling so strongly about Cambodia, Vietnam, and so on, and I also get (to some extent) how the root comment was provocative. It did sound like it was putting down an entire population, or at least was easy to take that way.

But going into aggressive abstract argument is not a helpful way to respond. It just degrades the discussion, poisons community further, and causes everyone to dig in.

A more helpful way to correct any misperception in the OP would be to share something of your own background that leads you to perceive things differently, i.e. to express your own personal experience and what it has taught you, that's relevant to the topic.

You don't have to do that, of course—it's just an option. But we do need you to respect the site guidelines when posting here, and you've been breaking them badly in this thread. That's not ok, even if your views are perfectly correct and your feelings entirely justified.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: your account has unfortunately been posting nationalistic flamewar comments in other threads too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587866

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44649278

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44626745

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44626401

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44626241

We ban accounts that do this, so we really need you to stop.

My SO's family is from the portion of Gia Lai neighboring Cambodia. Gia Lai itself is fairly poor, but ime the neighboring half of Cambodia is even poorer and desperate.

It's the same story in the Mekong Delta as well (having had to go to extended family weddings in rural An Giang).

And calling out the relative lawlessness in Cambodia is not racism in any shape or form. Based on your comment history, it seems you are reflexively defensive about Cambodia to a startling degree.

Cambodia was dealt a bad hand, but so was Vietnam and Laos as well, yet neither have the same degree of institutionalized criminality that you see in Cambodia.

The problem at the end of the day lies with the country's leadership, and a quasi-reformed Khmer Rouge member like Hun Sen just isn't the right leader to help Cambodia develop out of the LDC category.

Heck, Bangladesh (historically a peer of Cambodia) was also formed due to a tumultuous history and severe instability in the 1970s-90s, but concentrated on state capacity development - something which Cambodia's leadership thumbed their nose at in the 2010s.

> How do you know they are “desperate”

Based on the fact that Cambodian day laborers come to work as migrant workers in a region that Vietnamese (Kinh or Jarai) try to leave if they can.

HDI metrics themselves also represents that fact. Gia Lai - one of the poorest provinces in VN - has a higher Human Development Index (HDI) than all of Cambodia.

> Given the recent developments in Bangladesh

Yet the average Bangladeshi earns more money, is significantly more educated, and has a longer life expectancy than the average Cambodian.

Cambodia's HDI remains well below it's LDC peers across Asia, and that divergence only really began in the 2010s.

> Based on your biased opinion given your relative partiality toward Vietnamese...

I have been fairly open on HN about my criticisms about Vietnam, such as the authoritarian regression under To Lam along with VN's increased hallmarks of falling into a real estate and export economy induced middle income trap

> Cambodia has cooperated with the foreign government consistently

South Korea has literally banned Korean nationals from travelling to vast portions of Cambodia today and is considering cancelling aid projects because of non-cooperation from the Cambodian government.

> I see no such thing

In English, "you" is often used in the 3rd person as well, especially when communicating on a forum where conversations and readers are not only the OP

-------------

There is no reason why Cambodia can't pull off a similar developmental story like Vietnam or Bangladesh, yet Cambodian leadership in the 2010s and today has dropped the ball because any attempt at making Cambodia a more open economy would undermine rent seeking activities.

Citations needed for almost everything you just wrote.

On the other hand, South Korea has the right to do whatever it wants within its rights. I strongly support South Korea in its geo-strategic calculus to isolate Cambodia government. They must have very good reason to believe this is the right course of actions.

Cambodian government should learn from this experience and improve its law enforcement and its own geo-strategic planning.

> There is no reason why Cambodia can't pull off a similar developmental story like Vietnam or Bangladesh

Again with the Bangladesh comparison. Can you google Bangladesh and read news about it in the last year before commenting?

> Citations needed

HDI comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [0]. Notice how Cambodia and Bangladesh used to be developmental peers until 2010.

Life expectancy comparison of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [1].

Mean years of schooling in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [2]

Gross GNI per Capita PPP (log normalized) in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh [3] - the only metric Cambodia is roughly comparable to either country.

There is no way around it - the average Bangladeshi let alone the average Vietnamese is healthier, better educated, and richer than the average Cambodian. And this divergence only began in the 2010s when Hun Sen and Cambodia's political leadership began backsliding into kleptocratic authoritarianism.

[0] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/shdi/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[1] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lifexp/BGD+KHM+VNM/?lev...

[2] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/msch/BGD+KHM+VNM/?level...

[3] - https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/table/lgnic/BGD+KHM+VNM/?leve...

How and where in the Merriam-Webster are these supposed to be measures of “desperation”? Where is the citation for Cambodians going to work in Vietnam and not the other way around?

Also, cherry picking PPP GDP instead of commonly used nominal GDP to avoid conceding a point is quite desperate. Cambodia has a higher GDP per capita than Bangladesh but you won’t admit that. Can you buy a barrel of crude oil with PPP dollar? Also, you haven’t admitted that you are clueless about the current Bangladesh political and economic mess. https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/stock/foreign-investors-f...

If you want to play the comparison game, the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian based on your flawed reasoning.

Here are some really desperate Vietnamese trying to run away from Vietnam into the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8y3l7e2vjo.amp

> cherry picking

Then why are you ignoring Cambodia's abysmal education rate and life expectancy against Bangladesh?

Cambodia has Sub-Saharan levels of developmental indicators, and in fact plenty of similarly sized or larger Sub-Saharan countries like Kenya, Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, and Angola have outpaced Cambodia despite Cambodia being within ASEAN and with all the opportunities to take advantage of FDI-driven growth from neighbors like Malaysia and Thailand, let alone South Korea and Japan.

Cambodia has had a geographic advantage that most LDCs did not have, and has absolutely blundered it because of horrid leadership.

Heck, the median age in Cambodia is now significantly higher than much more developed Phillipines, so a demogrpanic crisis is clearly looming.

> the average Vietnamese can also be said to be much poorer and much more desperate than the average Malaysian

They absolutely are.

You don't find Malaysians working under the table in California or the UK, or cleaning toilets in South Korea or Japan. You do with Vietnamese.

Poverty in VN is much more severe than that in Malaysia (and Thailand), and the social safety net is almost nonexistent.

And that's the thing - even with such desperation, you still see Cambodians doing the same work Viet would do in South Korea in Vietnam or Thailand.

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think they are just a hypernationalistic Cambodian, Khmer American, or a former expat in Cambodia. I saw content from similar types of accounts during the Thailand-Cambodia conflict and the Techo Canal crisis.

But yea, it's stupid tbh and shows how badly Hun Sen is wreaking Cambodia.

The only reason Vietnam is where it's at today is because of being friendly to foreign investors and working on rooting out criminalization in the 2010s. Otherwise, VN would have languished. Cambodia has the right pieces to become the next VN, but is completely squandering the opportunity.

This kind of ploy to leveraging hypernationalism to mask weak economic growth (an LDC like Cambodia should not be growing at 5-6%) and increased isolation.

I may not agree with all your comments here but I do agree that name-calling/pigeonholing of this fashion is simply unproductive

Different cultures are ... wait for it ... different. There are cultures I would not want to live in.

There's a reason why so many people are desperate to get into the US.

Yes, I agree the US is an a great country. The US culture is still the most influential in the world. Everyone loves American foods, movies, and consumer products.

Cambodians love American culture. Young Cambodians are desperate to see new American movies, try American foods, and get their hands on new Apple products. They love Facebook. The majority of Cambodians favor the US over China: https://www.statista.com/chart/32058/preference-for-us-china...

Interestingly, the majority of Thais favor China over the US. The most likely reason I guess would that a very large percentage of Thais claim some form of Chinese ancestry.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597318 also. I'm sympathetic for where you're coming from, even though I don't fully understand—but this implementation is not working.

Thank you for the feedback. I got carried away. I will follow the guidelines.

Appreciated!

Yes they are not on the same level, Thailand used to be far ahead but has stagnated and Vietnam has caught up, Cambodia is so far behind you cannot imagine it will ever catch up with its neighboring countries. They still use dollars as currency because the local currency is so unstable

This is horrendous

15B lost, but it gave us good memes. Still, unbelievable amount.

As a Thai person I want to clarify its not Thai people doing this, it's Chinese people who have setup scam call centers near the golden triangle (where law enforcement is non-existent, it is a drug trafficking area) who are running the show, and they exclusively target only Chinese people.

Recent bust of a crime family complete with army in Myanmar, possibly related?

https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31797410 (sorry Chinese)