Victims tortured
Video footage from a Thai military camp reveals signs of torture on some of the 250+ victims freed last week from fraud centers across Myanmar’s Karen State.
On Thursday, a Philippines news outlet published the video in which a man from Bangladesh was interviewed along with four Ethiopians.
threaten to sell their body parts
All the men revealed brutal signs of torture, with one stating his captors would even threaten to sell their body parts to an alleged major market for the trade in Myanmar.
The news comes as Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra announced Wednesday that around 7,000 people have been rescued from Myanmar scam compounds and are awaiting transfer to Thailand.
Massive clean up
PM Paetongtarn’s bombshell followed a communication from the Royal Thai Police that they were preparing to receive “up to 10,000 foreigners rescued from a network of notorious scam centres.”
The video of the tortured victims comes from the group that Myanmar’s pro-government armed faction, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, released to the Thai army last week.
Some of the torture victims said they were forced to work nearly 20 hours each day to scam people via instant messaging applications and were beaten if they didn’t hit targets. Ethiopian national Yotor, 19, added he’d “received electric shocks every day.”
While evidence of brutal treatment has emerged, the silver lining is the staggering success of Sino-Thai politics in rapidly backing up a mutual agreement to shut down fraud centers.
Less than a fortnight ago, PM Paetongtarn and China’s leader Xi Jinping agreed cooperation in eradicating crime syndicates operating online scam operations and illegal gambling, typically run by Chinese nationals, along the infamous Thai-Myanmar border.
On Wednesday, Thai Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said of the 7,000 people recently freed, around 600 Chinese will return home on three China Southern Airlines flights Thursday to face the music back in China.
Ripple effect
Just prior to Thailand confirming the 7,000 freed, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Jeremy Douglas told The Guardian that the action to clean up the scam centers and compounds was “a huge move.”
The rapid rise of Myanmar’s scam centers came with the vacuum COVID created forcing crime online and from the 2021 arrest of junket billionaire Alvin Chau whose massive criminal organization controlled China-focused gambling operations in Macao.
The Chinese gangs forced out of Macao subsequently found a new gangster’s paradise in Myanmar, with their slick operations luring tens of thousands from across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East into enslaved work at scam centers.
At least for over 7,000 former captives, the tables are finally turning. NGO Global Advance Projects’ International Director of the Anti-human Trafficking Judah Tana said on Wednesday, however, it was “horrific” to see some of the victims.
“It’s as if they have walked out of a minefield or a war zone.”