Jonathan’s head
Corresponding to Southeast Asia
Thai News Pix
More than 250 people of 20 nationalities worked in telecommunications fraud centers in the Karen state of Myanmar were released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.
They were received by the Thai army and are assessed to find out if they have been victims of human trafficking.
Last week, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese chief Xi Jinping and promised to close the scam centers that proliferated along the Thai-Myanmar border.
His government has ceased access to power and fuel on the Thai side of the border, and hardened banking and visas to try to prevent scam operators from using Thailand as a transit country for the trip workers and money.
Some opposition deputies in Thailand have been pressure for this kind of action for two years.
Foreign workers are generally attracted to these scam centers by offers of good wages, or in some cases has been deceived by thinking that they will do a different job in Thailand, not in Myanmar.
Scammers are looking for workers with skills in the languages of those targeted for cyber-fraude, generally English and Chinese.
They are in a hurry to carry out online criminal activities, ranging from love scams known as “pork butcher” and cryptography fraud, money laundering and illegal games.
Some are ready to do the work, but others are forced to stay, with a possible release only if their families pay big ransoms. Some of those who escaped have described to be tortured.
Thai News Pix
Foreign workers released were delivered by the Democratic Army Karen Benevolent, DKBA, one of the many armed factions that control the territory within Karen State.
These armed groups were accused of having allowed the compounds of the scam of operating under their protection and tolerating the generalized abuses of the victims of the trafficking which are forced to work in the compounds.
The government of Myanmar could not extend its control over a large part of the state of Karen since independence in 1948.
Thai News Pix
Scammers are looking for workers with skills in the languages of those targeted for cyber-fraude, generally English and Chinese
On Tuesday, the special survey department in Thailand, similar to the American FBI, asked arrest mandates against three commanders from another armed group known as Karen National Army.
The mandates included Chit Thu, the warlord Karen who concluded an agreement in 2017 with a Chinese company to build Shwe Kokko, a new city which would be largely funded by scams.
The BBC visited Shwe Kokko at the invitation of Yatai, the company that built the city.
Yatai says there are no more scams at Shwe Kokko. He has set up huge billboards throughout the city proclaiming, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced work is not authorized and that “online companies” should leave.
But the local population told us that the scam sector was still underway and interviewed a worker who had been employed in one.
Like the DKBA, saw Chit Thu separated from the main group of insurgents of Karen, the KNU, in 1994, and allied with the Myanmar army.
Under the pressure of Thailand and China, both saw Chit Thu and the DKBA said they expel the scam companies from their territories.
The DKBA commander contacted a Thai deputy on Tuesday to organize the transfer of the 260 workers.
They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi , from Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodie.
