Hundreds of foreigners free from Myanmar scam centers

More than 250 people from 20 nationalities who were working in Telecom Fraud Centers in Karen State of Myanmar have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.

Workers, more than half of which were from African or Asian countries, were obtained by the Thai Army, and being evaluated to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.

Last week, Thai Prime Minister Patongtern Shinavatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and promised to close the increased scam centers with the Thai-Myanmar border.

His government has stopped access to electricity and fuel from the Thai side of the border, and has tightened the banking and visa rules so that scam operators transfer the operators as a transit country for laborers and cash transferred to Thailand. Can try to stop from.

Some opposition MPs in Thailand have been insisting on such action for the last two years.

Foreign workers are generally lured by these scam centers by proposals for good pay, or in some cases it is cheated thinking that they will do separate work in Thailand, not in Myanmar.

Scammers seek workers with skills in languages ​​of people who are targeted for cyber-fraud, usually English and Chinese.

They are suppressed to conduct online criminal activity, known as “pig butcher” and crypto fraud, known as money laundering and illegal gambling.

Some are ready to do work, but others are forced to live, only possible when their families pay large ransom. Some of the escape have tortured.

Foreign workers released were handed over by the Democratic Karen Benevolant Army, DKBA, one of the several armed groups that control the region inside the Karen state.

These armed groups have been accused of allowing scam compounds to work under their safety, and tolerate wide misuse of smuggling of victims that are forced to work in compounds.

The Myanmar government has been unable to increase its control over most of the state since independence in 1948.

On Tuesday, Thailand’s Special Investigation Department, which is similar to the US FBI, requested arrest warrant for three commanders of another armed group known as Karen National Army.

The warrant consisted of Chit Thu, Karen Warlald, who made a deal with a Chinese company in 2017, a new city to build Shave Coco, which was believed to have roughly funded by scams Is.

BBC visited Shue Coco at Yatai’s invitationThe company that built the city.

Yatai says that there are no other scams in Shwe Cocoa. It has declared a huge billboard throughout the city, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced labor is not allowed, and that “online businesses” should be abandoned.

But we were told by the local people that the scam business was still going on, and interviewed a worker, who was working in one.

Like the DKBA, saw that Chit Thu fell away from the main Karen rebel group, Nu in 1994, and alliance with the Myanmar army.

Under the pressure of Thailand and China, both of them have seen chit Thu and DKBA that they are expecting scam businesses from their areas.

The DKBA commander approached a Thai member of Parliament on Tuesday to arrange a handover of 260 workers.

These included 39 women from Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sar Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodia. ,