About 7,000 people have been rescued from illegal call centre operations in Myanmar and were waiting to be transferred to Thailand, prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Wednesday, as the country launched a large-scale crackdown on scam centres operating on the border.
The prime minister’s announcement came after Thai police said they were preparing to receive up to 10,000 foreigners rescued from a network of notorious scam centres.
Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, which share borders with Thailand, have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates operating online scam operations, including romance scams, bogus investments and illegal gambling.
“It’s massive and there are thousands of people in there that have been brought in, typically through Thailand, so it’s a huge move if they clean the compounds and scams out,” said Jeremy Douglas, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), ahead of the PM’s confirmation.
Myanmar’s border area of Myawaddy, where foreign nationals are expected to be released, has among the largest single cluster of scam compounds in the region, and possibly the world, said Douglas.
The operations have become increasingly globalised, with victims from across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East tricked into enslaved work. Scams targeting east and south-east Asians resulted in financial losses between $18bn and $37bn in 2023, the UN estimates.
At least 120,000 people across Myanmar and another 100,000 in Cambodia may be held in situations where they are forced to execute lucrative online scams, the UN has reported. Many are lured by false promises of well-paying jobs.
Thailand has renewed efforts this year to crack down on the operations after a high profile kidnapping of a Chinese actor into Myanmar in January. The 22-year-old man, Wang Xing, was abducted after arriving in Thailand for what he believed was a casting call with film producers.
Thai authorities this month cut internet, electricity and fuel supplies to five areas in Myanmar where crime groups are known to operate.
Douglas noted the Myanmar military’s border guard force (BGF), which controls Myawaddy, has been under immense pressure to crack down on the compounds.
“It has reached a breakpoint recently where they [the BGF] felt they had no choice but to step in and shut down compounds,” he said.
About 200 Chinese nationals are scheduled to be flown back to China on a China Southern Airlines flight on Thursday, said secretary to the defence minister General Traisak Intarassamee, as reported by the Bangkok Post.
About 260 people from scam operations were deported from Myanmar last week, the Thai Army said in a statement. The group represented 20 nationalities, including 138 Ethiopians.
Rescued Malaysians said they had been electrocuted, caned and confined in a dark room when they did not meet the targets set by the scam company.
“There were extreme beatings, lots of bruising. There were broken bones,” said Judah Tana, international director of the anti-human trafficking NGO Global Advance Projects, “It’s horrific to see them. It’s as if they have walked out of a minefield or a war zone.”