Jonathan Head, Lulu Luo and Thanyarat DoksoneReport Fromae Sot, Thai-Myanmar Bordergetty Images
Former workers and victims of scam centers are now stuck in makeshift camps, uncertain what happens next
“I swear to God that I need help,” said the man quietly on the other side of the line.
The Ethiopian, which is called Mike, said that he was detained with 450 others in a building inside Myanmar, along the country’s border with Thailand.
They are among the thousands of people who have been released from the notorious compounds of scam who have prospered on the border for years, in what seems to be the most difficult action to date against the industry along the Thai border.
But many of them are now blocked in Myanmar in makeshift camps because the process of evaluating them and having return flights to their own country is so slow.
The armed militia groups that hold them have a very limited capacity to support so many people – more than 7,000. One of them said they had stopped freeing people from compounds because they are not moved to Thailand quickly.
The BBC understands that the conditions in the camps are unsanitary, the food barely sufficient and that many liberated workers, like Mike, are in poor health. He suffers from panic attacks, after working for a year in a scam center where he was regularly beaten.
He told us that they had obtained two very basic meals a day, there were only two toilets for 450 people who, according to him, were now reluctant wherever they could.
Mike described being invited a year ago to take what had been promised to him
Instead, he found himself subjected to a brutal diet, forced to work long hours each day to reach the objective of fraud of people online set by his Chinese bosses.
“It was the worst experience of my life. Of course, I was beaten. But believe me, I saw worse do to other people.”
Getty images
Those who are detained in the camps have complained of cramped and unsanitary conditions
Mike is one of the 100,000 estimated people who would have been attracted to work in scam operations along the Thai border, most of them led by Chinese fraud and playing agents who took advantage of anarchy in this part of myanmar.
Despite horrible accounts of abuse from those who have escaped in the past, thousands always come from certain parts of the world where good jobs are rare, seduced by promises of good money.
China, where many victims of scams come from, has acted to close the scam operations along its own border with Myanmar, but until this year, neither China nor Thailand had done a lot about the Thai-Myanmar border.
Ariyan, a young man from Bangladesh, returned to Thailand to try to help 17 friends who are still there. He said he had made a promise to do so after his own exhausting escape from one of the most notorious scam centers last October.
He showed us a brief trembling video of the enclosure, still under construction in a distant and wooded valley, where he was detained, and remembers the terrible treatment he and his friends suffered in the hands of their Chinese boss.
“They gave us a target every week, $ 5,000. Otherwise, they gave us two electric shocks. Or they put us in a dark room, without windows. But if we earn a lot of money, they were very satisfied with us.”
Ariyan had to approach men in the Middle East and attract them to the transfer of funds to fictitious investments. Using AI, the crooks made it appear on the screen to be a pretty young woman, also changing her voice.
He said he hated doing it. He remembers a man who was ready to sell his wife’s jewelry to finance the fraudulent investment and wishing that he can warn him. But he said that the bosses had watched all their calls.
BBC / Lulu Luo
Ariyan returned to help 17 friends who are still in Myanmar
The liberation of the workers of the scam began more than two weeks ago after Thailand, under pressure from China and some of its own politicians, links with power and telecommunications with border compounds.
He limited banking access to the bosses of the scam and issued arrest warrants against some of the militia leaders who protected the company.
This struck the business, but he also struck the ordinary people of Karen who live even stronger, putting pressure on the commanders of the militia to show his will to put an end to abuses in scam centers. They started to help those who try to escape and completely evacuate certain compounds.
The camp in which Mike is hosted is now kept by the Democratic Army Karen BENEVOLEENT, DKBA, an insurgent faction of the Karen ethnic community.
Until recently, he protected the many scam compounds that arose on his territory. You can see them easily when you drive along the Moei river which divides the two countries – improbable expanses of new buildings in the Karen state torn by the war contrasting with the rural landscape on the Thai side of the border.
Thailand insists on the fact that it evolves as quickly as possible to treat the former scam workers and bring them home.
A group of 260 workers released was brought to the Moei river on a raft at the beginning of the month. And about 621 Chinese nationals were brought back directly to China with a police escort on aircraft with affirmation. Otherwise, the movement of workers released to Thailand seems to have stalled.
BBC / Lulu Luo and Jonathan Head
Several compounds of myanmar scam are visible from the Thai border
The problem is that they come from many different countries, some of which do not do much to help bring their people home. About 130 of the first 260s who came are from Ethiopia, which has no embassy in Bangkok.
The BBC has been informed that some other African countries will only bring their people to home if someone else pays. Most freed workers have nothing; Even their passports were retained by the compound bosses.
Thailand fears more than thousands of people, it will then have to take care indefinitely. He also wants to detect them to know what the real victims of the trafficking in human beings are and who may have committed criminal acts, but do not have the capacity to do so with such a large group of people.
Different ministries and agencies, including the army, are involved in the management of this problem and must agree what. This does not help that several senior police and immigration officials have been transferred for their presumed involvement in the scam sector.
“If this problem is not solved, we will not stop working on it – we have to work seriously,” Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Tuesday. But it referred to the broader problem of the scam company, not the growing humanitarian crisis among liberated workers.
BBC / Lulu Luo
Judah Tana helps the victims who are treated in the scam centers
“Unfortunately, it seems that we are a bit of a stop,” said Judah Tana, an Australian who has headed an NGO who has helps victims of trafficking for years in the scam centers.
“We hear painful information about the lack of sanitation and toilet. Many of the 260s that have already come have been detected for tuberculosis and positive tested. We hear from those who are still inside that people coughing blood. They are very happy that they have been released from the scammer compounds, but our concern is that we do not engage quickly.”
Thailand now seems ready to bring a group of 94 Indonesians, because their embassy has been pressure for their release for several days and has reserved flights to Indonesia for them.
But that leaves even more than 7,000 even more than myanmar, not knowing what will now happen.
Mike told me that he and many others with him feared that if they were not allowed to cross Thailand soon, the DKBA could give them to the bosses of the scam, where they could face the punishment for trying to leave.
Wednesday evening, his panic attacks and his breathing were so bad, he said, they took him to the hospital.
“I just want to go home,” he said on the phone. “I just want to go back to my country. That’s all I ask.”
