The ethnic Karen militia force based on Myanmar’s border with Thailand is suspected of enabling extensive internet fraud, human trafficking, forced labor and other crimes, and is being enriched by a business network that extends across Asia, a rights group said in a report last year.

But the case of Chinese TV actor Wang Xing, rescued this month from the notorious KK Park scam facility in eastern Myanmar’s Myawaddy, has brought the issue to public attention across Asia like never before.

The result has been pressure from both the Thai government and the Myanmar military, leading to a meeting on Wednesday between the militias and their business partners in which they agreed to stop human trafficking, said a businessman close to the ethnic Karen militia.

“The current issue of the Chinese actor has brought pressure from Thailand and the junta council in Naypyidaw. That’s why the meeting was held to enforce rules,” the businessman, who declined to be identified as talking to the media, told Radio Free Asia.

Leaders of Myawaddy-based Border Guard Force, or BGF, and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, or DKBA, which control the border zone under the auspices of the Myanmar military, agreed on a set of five rules with the business leaders, many of them ethnic Chinese, the businessman said.

The list includes no use of force, threats or torture, no child labor, no income from human trafficking and no scam operations, according to a copy of the rules that the businessman cited. Anyone found breaking the rules will lose their business and be expelled from the area.

RFA tried to contact senior members of the ethnic Karen forces, Maj. Naing Maung Zaw of the BGF and Lt. Gen Saw Shwe Wa of the DKBA, but neither of them answered their telephones.

(AEC News)

The Karen militia force in power in the eastern region emerged from a split in the 1990s in Myanmar’s oldest ethnic minority guerrilla force, the largely Christian-led Karen National Union, when Buddhist fighters broke away, formed the DKBA and sided with the military.

The military let the DKBA rule in areas under its control in Kayin state, set up a Border Guard Force to help the army, and to profit from cross-border trade, and later from online gambling and scam operations.

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Tricking investors

The scam centers in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have ensnared thousands of human trafficking victims from all over Asia, and as far away as Africa.

Many victims say they were lured by false job offers, then forced to scam people by convincing them over the phone or online to put money into bogus investments.

University of Texas researchers estimated in a report in March last year that scammers had tricked investors out of more than US$75 billion since January 2020.

People forced to work at the scam centers are often tortured if they refuse to comply, victims and rights groups say.

The rules announced by the militias and scam operators come after a string of high-profile kidnappings, including that of Chinese actor Wang.

Hong Kong authorities have sent a task force to Thailand in a bid to rescue an estimated 12 victims in Myanmar and have imposed a yellow travel advisory for Thailand and Myanmar, warning of “signs of threat,” but without mentioning the scam parks.

The Bangkok Post reported on Wednesday that Thai hotels and airlines have been getting a flood of cancellations from Chinese tour groups for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.

Authorities in the region have accused Chinese gangsters of organizing the centers but Chinese nationals in Thailand said Chinese state-owned companies were behind operations in Myanmar, and behind them is the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department.

“Wherever you have these scam parks, you will find Chinese companies plying the biggest trade,” a realtor who only gave the surname Pan for fear of reprisals recently told RFA Mandarin. “The Myawaddy park was built by Chinese state-owned companies.”

Pan said the parks were the criminal face of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s United Front outreach and influence operations.

“All of the big bosses are back in China,” he said.

The Justice for Myanmar human rights group has accused governments and businesses across the region of enabling the cyber scam operations by failing to take action against the profitable flows they generate.

Edited by RFA Staff.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.

Wang, who appeared in public with a shaved head following his release, will fly to Shanghai on Friday evening local time, his lawyer told state media, but his family had requested that the flight number not be publicized.

Thai police reported on Jan. 7 that Wang, 31, a relatively unknown TV actor, had been rescued after being lured to Thailand by scammers.

According to Thai police, Wang didn’t realize he’d been deceived until his he was taken across the river into Myanmar and found himself “in a rustic environment.”

However, he did take photos of his vehicle’s license plate and key landmarks on the way, sending them to his girlfriend in China, Chinese state media quoted Thailand’s Senior Inspector General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot as saying.

Wang’s girlfriend Jia Jia then raised the alarm on Chinese social media after losing touch with him, according to the Global Times.

“I’m grateful to the Thai government and the local immigration authorities for bringing me back here safely,” Wang told Thai broadcaster PBS. “I realized I’d been tricked when they took me across the border, but I didn’t dare to resist.”

KK Park

The actor was taken to KK Park in Myawaddy, Myanmar, near the Thai border, where thousands of human trafficking victims from all over Asia — and as far away as Africa — are being held hostage by scammers in the area, victims have told Radio Free Asia in earlier reports.

They said they were lured by false advertisements and forced to scam other people, then tortured if they refused to comply.

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The families of victims from Hong Kong recently petitioned the city’s leader John Lee for help, while the relatives of 174 mainland Chinese nationals believed to be in KK Park have made their details public following Wang Xing’s rescue, state media reported.

The campaigners say their relatives are mostly men between the ages of 17 and 35, and have been missing for anything from a few months to a few years, China’s Global Times newspaper reported.

Trips to Thailand

Wang’s kidnapping has prompted a wave of cancellations of planned trips to Thailand by Chinese nationals, local media reported.

“Many Chinese travelers planning to visit Thailand for the upcoming Lunar New Year have expressed concerns on social media this week and posed blunt questions,” Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported.

In a separate report, the paper said Cantopop star Eason Chan had canceled a gig in Thailand, citing safety concerns.

Wang’s return came amid growing fears for the safety of Chinese model Yang Zeqi, who is also missing, believed held in KK Park after traveling to the Thai-Myanmar border region, according to HK01.com.

(Cover News)

Yang’s family made an appeal on Weibo on the evening of Jan. 8, saying he had traveled there “after passing an online audition.”

Yang spoke to his mother by video call on Dec. 29, wearing black clothes and looking beat up, telling her he was OK, but nothing has been heard from him since, the report said.

Thai police are investigating his disappearance, according to Thailand’s The Nation.

‘Intensified police crackdowns’

According to China’s Global Times, the majority of Chinese nationals are taken to the park either from the Thai border area, or after crossing the border into Myanmar from the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.

Some families still receive occasional messages from their loved ones, but most appear to have had their personal belongings and devices confiscated, the report said.

“Due to intensified police crackdowns by the authorities in China, Myanmar and Thailand, profits from these scam centers have since dwindled,” the paper said, citing family members.

“As a result, these centers have ramped up their deceptive tactics [and] new types of scams are also emerging,” it said, adding that scammers are now targeting actors and language teachers with the promise of jobs.

In November, an ethnic minority militia in northern Myanmar detained more than 1,000 people suspected of online scamming, the majority of them Chinese nationals, and deported them back to China.

Online scamming centers have proliferated across Southeast Asia in recent years, especially in some of the more lawless parts of Myanmar, as well as in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.

The centers are often run by Chinese gangs and are notorious for luring unsuspecting people into jobs that entail going online to contact and defraud people, many in China.

Chinese authorities are keen to get the rackets based over the border in Myanmar shut down, and so action against them has become a key factor for rival factions in Myanmar, from the junta to its insurgent enemies and other militias, as they vie for China’s favor.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Mandarin and RFA Cantonese.

The women, who went to the Middle Eastern country for jobs, said they have been physically abused by their employers and denied food and sleep. Some said they hadn’t been paid or were told they would be required to work for longer than their contracts stipulated.

The maids and other workers in Saudi Arabia first sought Cambodian government intervention and assistance in March. 

In April, Cambodia’s Labor Ministry said 78 migrant workers who had been misled into working in Saudi Arabia had been placed in hotel rooms under the care of Cambodian diplomats. 

Two dozen women returned home in May. Another 48 women have since been flown back to Cambodia, according to Em Bopha, one of the workers who is still in Saudi Arabia. 

A total of 133 Cambodian workers have been removed from their abusive employment situations. The 60 workers still in Saudi Arabia have been staying at several different facilities while diplomats arrange for their return, she said.

Cambodian company Fatina Manpower Co. Ltd. helped arrange the contracts between the workers and their Saudi employers, and is now working on their return. 

The remaining workers suspect the delay in sending them back to Cambodia is rooted in Fatina Manpower’s inability to pay compensation to partner companies in Saudi Arabia, Em Bopha said. 

The owner of Fatina Manpower, Man Teramizy, is a senior official at Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor. Radio Free Asia was unable to reach the ministry’s spokesperson, Katta Orn, for comment on June 24.

Cambodia’s ambassador to Egypt, Uk Sarun, said a group of about a dozen maids who left one of the holding facilities for a day on June 20 has complicated diplomatic efforts to coordinate their return. 

The workers have been frustrated by the delays and uncertainty, Em Bopha said. But fleeing from the facility was “insulting,” Uk Sarun told RFA.

“We have tried very hard,” he said. “We are still waiting for responses [from the company]. But now it’s a little more difficult. I asked them for understanding and I told them to return to the company’s facility.” 

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The women, who went to the Middle Eastern country for jobs, said they have been physically abused by their employers and denied food and sleep. Some said they hadn’t been paid or were told they would be required to work for longer than their contracts stipulated.

The maids and other workers in Saudi Arabia first sought Cambodian government intervention and assistance in March. 

In April, Cambodia’s Labor Ministry said 78 migrant workers who had been misled into working in Saudi Arabia had been placed in hotel rooms under the care of Cambodian diplomats. 

Two dozen women returned home in May. Another 48 women have since been flown back to Cambodia, according to Em Bopha, one of the workers who is still in Saudi Arabia. 

A total of 133 Cambodian workers have been removed from their abusive employment situations. The 60 workers still in Saudi Arabia have been staying at several different facilities while diplomats arrange for their return, she said.

Cambodian company Fatina Manpower Co. Ltd. helped arrange the contracts between the workers and their Saudi employers, and is now working on their return. 

The remaining workers suspect the delay in sending them back to Cambodia is rooted in Fatina Manpower’s inability to pay compensation to partner companies in Saudi Arabia, Em Bopha said. 

The owner of Fatina Manpower, Man Teramizy, is a senior official at Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor. Radio Free Asia was unable to reach the ministry’s spokesperson, Katta Orn, for comment on June 24.

Cambodia’s ambassador to Egypt, Uk Sarun, said a group of about a dozen maids who left one of the holding facilities for a day on June 20 has complicated diplomatic efforts to coordinate their return. 

The workers have been frustrated by the delays and uncertainty, Em Bopha said. But fleeing from the facility was “insulting,” Uk Sarun told RFA.

“We have tried very hard,” he said. “We are still waiting for responses [from the company]. But now it’s a little more difficult. I asked them for understanding and I told them to return to the company’s facility.” 

Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The women, who went to the Middle Eastern country for jobs, said they were physically abused by their employers, including being denied food and sleep. Some said they had not been paid or that they were told they would have to work for much longer than their contracts stipulated.

Many of those who returned to Cambodia suffered mentally and physically from being forced to work long hours, not having enough food and water, and in some cases, not being paid, they said. 

The case illustrates the risks that Cambodian migrant workers face when they go abroad for better-paying jobs as domestics. Many are subjected to a labor exploitation and serious abuses, including nonpayment of wages, excessive work hours, forced labor, and psychological, physical or sexual abuse by their employers. 

The maids and other workers in Saudi Arabia had sought Cambodian government intervention and assistance since March. 

In April, Cambodia’s Labor Ministry said 78 migrant workers who had been tricked into working in Saudi Arabia had been rescued and placed in hotel rooms under the care of Cambodian diplomats. 

Cambodian officials claimed to be purchasing flights for the workers to return home, but they remained stranded for a few weeks, lacking access to adequate food.

The 24 workers recently repatriated to Cambodia were among a larger group of 39 Cambodians evacuated in April by diplomats from the Cambodian Embassy in Egypt, which also has responsibility for Saudi Arabia. 

Lawsuit?

One of the recently returned maids told RFA that she and others, who were rescued earlier and arrived in Cambodia on April 28, would discuss the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the Cambodian company Fatina Manpower Co. Ltd. for exploiting them. 

The maids said they were also forced to sign agreements not to sue the recruitment company before flying out of Saudi Arabia.

“I served [my employer] for many months when he was in Cambodia, and I served his family when I was in Saudi Arabia, but I did not get paid,” said one of the recently returned maids, who like others refused to be identified for fear of retribution.

“His family used us to cook for them [and] to serve his Japanese and Arabian students,” she said. “Many Arabian students used us to launder their clothes, clean their schools, clean homes and more.”  

The remaining 15 said the embassy is still working to facilitate their repatriation.

Man Teramizy, owner of Fatina Manpower and a senior official at the Labor Ministry, intervened in the matter by visiting a group of workers in Saudi Arabia to facilitate the repatriation process and pay compensation to his partner company in Saudi Arabia, the workers said

He paid about US$1,000 per employee to terminate their contracts with the partner company, they said.  

Chamroeun Srey Sor, one of the stranded workers, told RFA that she had not been paid by the company. She wants the embassy and relevant ministries to send her back to Cambodia as soon as possible.

“I’m asking [for] help [to] return to Cambodia as soon as possible because my mother in Cambodia has an eye disease, and no one takes care of her,” she said. “On top of that, my child is also living with her.”

RFA could not reach Uk Sarun, Cambodia’s ambassador to Egypt, or Labor Ministry spokesman Kata Un for comment.

Khun Tharo, program manager for the NGO Central, said the Cambodian government needs to investigate agents of companies that send workers to work in Saudi Arabia.

“If we do not find the person responsible for the problems that have occurred, then many of these Cambodian workers will become the unresolved victims of exploitation and serious labor rights violations,” he said.  

Translated by Sum Sok Ry for RFA Khmer. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The women had come to Saudi Arabia to work as maids, but once they landed they were subjected to physical abuse in the households where they worked, including being denied food and sleep. Some said they had not been paid, or were told they would have to work for much longer than their contracts stated.

In mid-April, dozens of women were rescued from their work settings by Cambodian Embassy staff. 

Ambassador Uk Sarun said that 16 of the women had been sent home in late April, and Cambodian and Saudi officials claimed they were purchasing tickets for the remaining women. But so far they have remained in Saudi Arabia.

Last week, two weeks after they were rescued, the women demanded that they be sent home because the embassy was not providing them adequate food, and their health was deteriorating.

And now, with little apparent sign of their repatriation, they are asking the Saudi government to intervene. 

Assurances

The women say a high ranking Saudi labor official will meet with them soon, and that they had already met with Ministry of Labor staff to explain their situation and how they were mistreated.

The labor ministry officials assured them that they would work on their behalf to resolve their mistreatment and ensure they would be get any unpaid wages, a representative of the workers told RFA Khmer on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. 

“The Arab officials told us to keep passports to ourselves and be prepared to talk to the company to demand our salary and to get our mistreatment solved,” she said.

“Then, they will stamp the visas so we can return to Cambodia,” she said. “They said they will protect the Cambodian people to be able to go back to Cambodia.”

They also advised her not to trust “Arabian companies” because they are women, she said, implying that some in Saudi Arabia think workers’ rights only apply to men.

Regarding the delay in their repatriation, the workers claim that it’s because their Cambodian employer, Fatina Manpower Co., sold them to a partner company in Saudi Arabia at a high price, and is hoping that maids will give up and complete their contracts.

One of the rescued workers, Ye Thoeun, told RFA that she had worked for more than 20 days in April but she had not been paid.

She said she had only signed on to a three-month contract, but the Saudi company said she needed to work for longer, possibly up to two years. 

When she fell ill, she said her boss told her to stay up in her room until she got better, and that she would not be paid for the days she wasn’t working.

“He spoke in Arabic, saying that the price he paid for me is very high, therefore, he cannot send me back to Cambodia,” she said. “But, he said I can go if I pay him US$1,500.”

She said that if she had that kind of money, she would have bought out her own contract and returned home only months after she arrived.

“Now, I just keep crying without hope because there is no solution for me, I don’t know what to do,” she said. 

RFA was not able to reach the Cambodian  Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ouk Sarun or Cambodian Labor Ministry spokesman Kata On for comment.

Debt trap

Many of the workers stranded in Saudi Arabia are trapped by their debts. 

One of the laborers, Chim Saran, said she could not repay the bank because her employer had not paid her.

“We came from afar expecting to get work to get money to send to the families so we can pay off our debts,” she said. 

“But since we got here we have faced many problems, the employers mistreat us in every way,” she said. “They don’t pay us salaries or give us adequate food, and homeowners confine us and if we don’t work for them, they threaten us.”

According to Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor, 133 female workers came to work in Saudi Arabia. The ministry acknowledges that some of these workers have been overworked and are exposed to health problems and a lack of freedom. 

However, human rights officials and workers are still urging the Ministry of Labor and other stakeholders to intervene to find other groups of workers who have been exploited by companies and employers to send them back to Cambodia.

Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

The zone, which sits along the Mekong River in northwestern Bokeo province, is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese tourists and has been described as a de-facto Chinese colony. 

It has become a haven for cyber scams, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking, and human and wildlife trafficking by organized criminal networks.

The Indians had been told by recruiters in Mumbai that they would get jobs related to cryptocurrency in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province, said the official, who like others in this report, did not want to be identified so he could speak freely. 

But when they arrived, the Chinese bosses loaded them on a boat that crossed the Mekong River to Bokeo province, where the Indians said they were forced to work as online scammers or fake call center workers in the zone.

Their plight came to light after one of the Indians managed to escape and return to India, where he filed a complaint with Mumbai police on March 24, The Laotian Times reported.

One Lao official said that they had received a tip-off email from someone who knew about their predicament, and “took action right away to help these youngsters.”

Hurt and abused

An official involved in anti-human trafficking efforts said the Chinese running the operations physically abused some of the Indians, denied them food, and locked them up if they didn’t generate revenue. 

“The Chinese bosses physically hurt the Indian nationals with hammers and sticks,” he told RFA. “They simply had to work for free or without getting paid.”

Anti-human trafficking agents in India arrested two people believed to be in charge of agents who recruited up to 40 young Indian nationals so they could be sent to Laos to work as online scammers, said the official.

Other Indians in the zone who find themselves in the same predicament contact Lao government officers daily for help, said a second official involved in anti-human trafficking activities.

Since the beginning of the year, about 30 Indians have contacted a Lao anti-human trafficking office, which can help them find a safe temporary place to stay and send them home once authorities receive a tip about them, he said.

Some information comes from India's Ministry of External Affairs asking for help to get Indian nationals out of the zone, the second official said.

It is unknown how many Indians are still working in the zone, he added.

South Korean and Malaysian nationals have also fallen victim to traffickers who hand them over to Chinese in the zone to engage in cyber fraud, said the official with knowledge of the situation.

The Embassy of India in Vientiane issued a recent notice on its website that it was aware that Indian nations were being lured for employment in Thailand or Laos as “digital sales and marketing executives” and “customer support services” by dubious companies involved in call-center scams and cryptocurrency fraud in the Golden Triangle SEZ.

Translated by Phouvong for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

Those rescued were brought to shore for medical treatment, said Supriadi, captain of the rescue ship, even as some locals protested their arrival. Six others from the same boat were rescued Wednesday by local fishermen.

“When they were found, they were weak due to dehydration and perhaps had not eaten for several days,” said Supriadi, who goes by one name. 

Authorities reported that search efforts were complete.

A video taken by a fisherman on Wednesday showed more than 50 Rohingya standing on the overturned hull of the barely visible boat as they frantically waved for help. The boat had flipped over in waters off Kuala Bubon port (16 nautical miles from Meulaboh), possibly after being struck by large waves, according to officials.

Zaned Salim, one of the original six to be rescued, said 150 Rohingya departed from a Malaysian refugee camp 24 days ago, hoping to sail to Australia, adding that about 50 people had died during the journey. Authorities said they did not recover any bodies during rescue efforts, adding that those efforts were finished. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of residents blocked roads in protest against the latest Rohingya arrival. 

“The residents demand that the Rohingya refugees not be placed in their village,” said Iswahyudi, West Aceh’s deputy police chief, who goes by one name.

Local journalists reported that villagers were carrying banners and shouting their opposition to the refugees’ presence. 

“We do not accept refugees here. … Why bring them to our village?” said one resident.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, but has a long history of hosting refugees from various conflicts. It allows refugees to stay temporarily, while they wait for a third country to resettle them, a process that can take years.

Aceh has a history of welcoming Rohingya, specifically, but there has been growing resistance fueled by negative sentiment on social media. Some residents claimed there are not enough resources for both themselves and the Rohingya.

Faisal Rahman, an associate with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) praised the collaborative rescue operations by the local leadership and law enforcement.

“The UNHCR deeply appreciates the swift and compassionate action of the West Aceh district officials and their teams in aiding the Rohingya,” Faisal said, adding several of those rescued were in poor health and rushed to a local hospital.

Rahman said Zaned Salim’s claim that as many as 150 people were aboard the boat needed to be verified. 

“If the refugee’s claims were true, it implies a tragic loss of lives at sea, as only 75 individuals have been accounted for,” he said. 

Persecuted minority

The Rohingya are members of a persecuted stateless Muslim minority from Myanmar who have been fleeing violence and oppression in their homeland for years. 

Following a 2017 military offensive in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that the U.N. described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” about 740,000 Rohingya fled from their homes across the border to Bangladesh. About 1 million Rohingya live in crowded camps in and around Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.

Desperate, many leave overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh, seeking better lives in other Muslim countries including Malaysia and Indonesia. 

The latest wave of Rohingya began arriving in Aceh in October 2023. 

Since then, over 1,800 refugees have landed in Indonesia and have been accommodated in locations across Aceh, according to the UNHCR.

In January, the UNHCR reported that 569 Rohingya refugees had died or went missing at sea in 2023 while attempting to flee from Myanmar or Bangladesh.

BenarNews is an online news affiliate of Radio Free Asia.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Nurdin Hasan for BenarNews.

The 166 Vietnamese, who say they are running out of food and want officials to help them leave Myanmar, recorded a video of themselves chanting that they are Vietnamese citizens and have been stuck in Myanmar for 40 days without food, electricity or water.  

“We are now living in cold weather, and our food is exhausted because we have run out of money,” they say on the video, which a relative of one of those stranded sent to Radio Free Asia. “Please help us to return to Vietnam as soon as possible, Vietnamese Embassy! Save us, please!” 

RFA could not independently verify the video. A reporter made multiple attempts to contact the stranded people via various messaging applications, but did not receive any responses. 

The Vietnamese had been trafficked to northern Myanmar to work for online gambling companies, where they faced harsh working conditions and abuse by their employers. 

Myanmar security forces rescued them on Oct. 20 and arranged for them to stay temporarily in an abandoned school in Shan state’s Laukkai township. 

When the group stops chanting in the video, a Vietnamese man says the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar informed them that it had been able to verify information about them, but no diplomats had yet visited the group or arranged for their repatriation.

“I hope the embassy and the Vietnamese government will try to save us and help us return home as soon as possible,” he said. 

Trafficked to casinos, scam rings

The trapped Vietnamese workers are among the hundreds of thousands of people who have been trafficked by organized criminal gangs to Southeast Asia and forced into working at illegal casinos or online scams, according to a United Nations report issued in August. 

The Vietnamese citizens, who say they were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments in Myanmar, faced abuse from their employers.

RFA contacted the foreign affairs ministries in Myanmar and Vietnam for comment, but received no response.

When RFA called the Vietnamese Embassy in Myanmar on Friday, a reporter was told to contact the Consular Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer in the department’s Citizen Protection Call Center said the “rescue and provision of assistance to stranded citizens in Myanmar are very complicated and time-consuming as the country is undergoing a civil war.”  

An officer surnamed Lap in the consular division of Department of Foreign Affairs in Vietnam’s Kien Giang province — home to about 100 of the stranded workers — said the agency received more than 20 petitions from residents who are their relatives. The agency forwarded the petitions to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, but had received no response. 

During a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry press briefing on Nov. 9, spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said officials had identified 166 Vietnamese citizens among foreigners rescued from “deceptive casinos” and took them to a safe area in northern Myanmar, bordering China.” 

But Vietnam’s access to the stranded people and effort to protect its citizens faced difficulties because of armed conflict in Myanmar’s northern border area and other places, she said. 

A man from Kien Giang province, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA that his daughter was among those stranded and that she and others were being held under temporary detention while Burmese authorities conducted an investigation. 

Though several months have passed, she does not know why the investigations have not yet been completed, he said.

Local police gave him similar information, he said. 

A woman from the southern province of Kien Giang whose daughter is among the stranded group told RFA on Friday that her daughter and others were rescued by Myanmar’s army during an administrative inspection at a company with the Vietnamese name Lien Thang Group.

The 166 stranded Vietnamese are living in classrooms where the power is on for only one or two hours a day, said the woman who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

They do not have access to drinking water, though they receive two meals daily from the Burmese Army, consisting of a bowl of rice and some vegetable soup, she said. 

“It’s getting cold these days, but many don’t have warm clothes,” she said. 

Phone scams

Despite having a stable job at a local restaurant in Kien Giang, her daughter was enticed to leave for Myanmar in mid-August this year to get another job with a lighter workload and better pay, her mother said. The employer promised to pay her 21 million dong, or about US$865, monthly. 

“Things were quite pleasant in the first two weeks as they let her go shopping and eat at restaurants,” the young woman’s mother said. “Then, the company signed a labor contract [with her] and started to apply their rules and tighten everything. Even phones were not allowed.”

The employers forced the young Vietnamese woman and the other workers to use Facebook to make calls soliciting people to put money into an investment scam, giving her a daily revenue quota of 200-300 million dong (US$8,200-12,400), the mother said. 

If they failed to do so, their employers would leave them hungry in the room, beat them or apply electrical shocks.

The company forced some of her co-workers to find and entice Vietnamese people to go [to Myanmar] and work for the company,” she said.” They would be beaten and electrocuted if they failed to meet this quota, too.” 

The woman said that her daughter and a group of dozens of friends left Vietnam for Myanmar together, and they all worked for a company whose management team speaks Chinese and Burmese. They used Vietnamese translators to communicate with the workers. 

The people stranded come from various places in Vietnam, with about 100 from Kien Giang province, she said. 

In September, RFA Vietnamese reported on the plight of some of the workers who were forced to carry out fraudulent activities for long hours and were assaulted or tortured if they failed to meet sales quotas or did not follow instructions. 

After receiving calls for help from her daughter and other victims, the mother and other families sent a rescue petition to the Kien Giang Department of Foreign Affairs on Oct. 16. They also traveled to Vietnam’s capital Hanoi to submit a petition to the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

They have not received responses from any of the officials, however. 

“One day, we called the agency to which we submitted our petition, and they said that Vietnam and Myanmar were negotiating with and asking China to open their border gate for stranded Vietnamese to leave Myanmar’s war zone and shelter temporarily in China,” said the mother. 

“I heard that Thai, Cambodian and Filipino citizens had been repatriated to their countries via China,” she said, referring to other foreign workers in Myanmar. “I don’t know why my daughter and her friends are still stuck in Myanmar.” 

On Friday, Malaysia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said 121 Malaysian citizens, who were allegedly victims of online scams, had been evacuated from Myanmar after being stranded due to the fighting between Myanmar forces and rebel groups in northern Myanmar. 

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese citizens were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments,

Myanmar authorities told Vietnamese Embassy officials in Yangon, according to ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang. 

The nationalities of the remaining roughly 140 others rescued wasn’t clear.

After ministry officials verified the identities of the 61 people, the embassy was instructed to work with authorities in Myanmar and Vietnam to create a consular protection plan and to eventually transport them back to Vietnam, she told reporters at a regular press briefing. She did not say where the casinos were located.

In late August, Radio Free Asia received calls for help from two families in Vietnam’s southern province of Kien Giang regarding their teenage children who they believed were trafficked to Laos, Myanmar and China. It was unclear if these teenagers were among the group. 

The identities of the 61 people haven’t been released, and Pham Thu Hang did not say when they were rescued. 

A United Nations report on Aug. 29 said that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced by organized criminal gangs into working at illegal casinos and other online scam work in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar and Cambodia topped the list of countries where the largest numbers of citizens were being forced to carry out online scams.

Many of the victims are well-educated, computer-literate and multilingual, according to the report. Victims come from across the ASEAN region – including Vietnam – as well as mainland China and sometimes even from Africa and Latin America, it said.

“The scam centers generate revenue amounting to billions of US dollars each year,” the report said. 

“Public health measures closed casinos in many countries and in response, casino operators moved operations to less regulated spaces including conflict-affected border areas and Special Economic Zones, as well as to the increasingly lucrative online space,” it said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese citizens were tricked into working at fraudulent gambling establishments,

Myanmar authorities told Vietnamese Embassy officials in Yangon, according to ministry spokeswoman Pham Thu Hang. 

The nationalities of the remaining roughly 140 others rescued wasn’t clear.

After ministry officials verified the identities of the 61 people, the embassy was instructed to work with authorities in Myanmar and Vietnam to create a consular protection plan and to eventually transport them back to Vietnam, she told reporters at a regular press briefing. She did not say where the casinos were located.

In late August, Radio Free Asia received calls for help from two families in Vietnam’s southern province of Kien Giang regarding their teenage children who they believed were trafficked to Laos, Myanmar and China. It was unclear if these teenagers were among the group. 

The identities of the 61 people haven’t been released, and Pham Thu Hang did not say when they were rescued. 

A United Nations report on Aug. 29 said that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced by organized criminal gangs into working at illegal casinos and other online scam work in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar and Cambodia topped the list of countries where the largest numbers of citizens were being forced to carry out online scams.

Many of the victims are well-educated, computer-literate and multilingual, according to the report. Victims come from across the ASEAN region – including Vietnam – as well as mainland China and sometimes even from Africa and Latin America, it said.

“The scam centers generate revenue amounting to billions of US dollars each year,” the report said. 

“Public health measures closed casinos in many countries and in response, casino operators moved operations to less regulated spaces including conflict-affected border areas and Special Economic Zones, as well as to the increasingly lucrative online space,” it said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

The emptying of the FSO Safer marked the culmination of nearly two years of political negotiations, technical planning and fund-raising - against a backdrop of ongoing conflict between Yemeni Government forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, and Houthi rebels.

David Gressly, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, has been in the lead on this “very hard process”.

He spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki about what will happen to the oil, lessons learned and why average Yemenis have welcomed the news.

Mr. Gressly began by providing background on the operation, which was spearheaded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). 

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Abdelmonem Makki.

Several users shared the said video where one can see a few women dressed in the Army-style camouflage uniform entering a tent, where they find two girls chained. They go on to unchain the girls and check if they are hurt.

Twitter Blue user Anamika Singh shared the above-mentioned video on May 26 with the following caption: “UN Army attacks ISIS tent, army and rescues 38 sex enslaved women from India and Bangladesh – majority Hindu girls. For those who don’t believe *The Kerala Story* film, this is the proof. Look at the way the girls have been chained”. The tweet has received about 8,000 views. (Archive)

UN Army attacks ISIS tent, army and rescues 38 sex enslaved women from India and Bangladesh – majority Hindu girls.

For those who don’t believe *The Kerala Story* film, this is the proof. Look at the way the girls have been chained pic.twitter.com/hkbHiN0iI2

— Anamika Singh (@AnamikasinghIN) May 26, 2023

Jitendra Singh, who, according to his Facebook bio, is a digital creator, posted the same video on May 25 with the same caption. The post has been reshared over 200 times.

Another Twitter user, @CBShukla3, also shared the video on May 25 with a similar claim. (Archive)

UN Army attacks ISIS tent, army and rescues 38 sex enslaved women from India and Bangladesh – majority Hindu girls.

For those who don’t believe *The Kerala Story* film, this is the proof. Look at the way the girls have been chained pic.twitter.com/tVxlfYJ7F5

— C. B. Shukla (@CBShukla3) May 25, 2023

Several other users shared the clip with similar captions on Twitter and Facebook. Some can be found below:

Fact Check

On first look, we noticed a logo in the viral video frame. It consisted of a red star and the text: ‘YPJ NAVENDA RAGIHANDINE’. A keyword search led us to the website ‘The Kurdish Project‘, according to which, YPJ is an acronym for ‘Women’s Protection Units’ in Kurdish. It is an all-female brigade of the armed forces of the Syrian region of Kurdistan, which has been instrumental in the process of taking back control of the Kurdish town, Kobani, on the Turkish-Syrian border, from the ISIS.

Next, we broke down the video into several key-frames and ran a reverse image search on a few of them. This led us to a report by SDF press centre from September 6, 2022. SDF stands for the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of about 55,000 fighters fighting Islamic State with U.S. support.

The headline of the report said, “Video-The YPJ Liberates Four Women Imprisoned In The Al-Hol Camp”. The Al-Hol is a refugee camp in northern Syria. Originally set up in 1991, the camp was reopened when anti-ISIS operations began in Iraq, sending hordes of civilians across the border into Syria. Majority of the population in the camp are women and children.

The report also carried a 7.28-minute video which can be found on the SDF press centre’s YouTube channel. The viral clip starts at the 0:21 mark of the YouTube video.

We also found the above video on YPJ’s YouTube channel YPJ MEDIA CENTER posted on September 5, 2022. The title said in Kurdish: “YPJ and Internal Security Forces rescued 4 women who were held captive by Daesh gangs. #YPJ”.

A further keyword search led us to a Twitter thread made by YPJ on September 5, 2022, which carried a shorter vedio (1.54-minute long) of the rescue operation. (Archive)

In this video you will see how #YPJ forces liberate women in the ongoing campaign against #ISIS cells in al-#Hol camp.

It shows 3 women that where found in a tent, where ISIS women had put their legs in chains. Their bodies showed marks of torture.#Syria #Daesh #SDF #YPG pic.twitter.com/7W2kWOHcYy

— YPJ Information (@YPJ_Info) September 5, 2022

The fourth tweet in the thread mentions that the rescued women belonged to the Yazidi community, a Kurdish religious minority found primarily in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, the Caucasus region, and parts of Iran. They had been kidnapped at a young age. After being rescued, they were provided with psychological support.

It is relevant to add that the Al-Hol camp houses some ISIS women. They have been in the camp since the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the fall of its self-proclaimed caliphate in March 2019.

Therefore, the claim that the video shows women from India and Bangladesh being rescued from ISIS tents is false. The video is from 2022 and the women who were rescued by the YPJ forces from the Al-Hol camp were Yazidis, not Indian or Bangladeshi.

The post Video of Yazidi women rescued by Syrian forces viral with false claims that they’re Hindus from India, Bangladesh appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

Permitting such imprudent risk-taking flows directly from the Trump-GOP Congressional weakening of regulations in 2018, which was supported by dozens of Democrats, led by bank toady Senator Mark Warner (D-VA). That bipartisan deregulation provided a filibuster-proof passage by the Senate.

The other culprit is the Federal Reserve. Its very fast interest rate hikes reduced the asset value of those two banks’ holdings in long-term Treasury bonds, which reduced their capital reserves. With the “what, me worry” snooze of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, S.V.B had little supervision from state regulatory examiners and compliance enforcers.

Actually, big depositors sniffed the shakiness of these two banks and acted ahead of the regulatory cops with mass withdrawals that sealed the fate of S.V.B. Imagine, S.V.B was giving out bonuses hours before its collapse. For this cluelessness, the bank’s CEO, Gregory Becker, took home about eleven million dollars in pay last year.

All this was predicted by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter. Warren, in particular, specifically opposed the 2018 Congressional lifting of stronger liquidity and capital requirements along with regular stress tests for banks with assets over $50 billion. Trump’s law allowed the absence of these safeguards to cover banks with assets up to $250 billion. Such de-regulation covered S.V.B and Signature.

Signature Bank had former House Banking Committee Chair Barney Frank on its board of directors. His name is on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed following the 2008 Wall Street collapse. Even Mr. Frank was clueless about what Signature’s CEO Joseph DePaolo was mismanaging. (DePaulo was paid $8.6 million last year.)

Of course, the underfunded FDIC doesn’t have enough money to make good all the large depositors in these two banks. So, it is increasing the fees charged to all banks for such government insurance. The banks will find ways to pass these surchargers on to their customers.

Other midsized banks may be shaky as more major depositors pull out and put their money into mega-giant banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, which are universally viewed as “too big to fail.” The smaller businesses harmed by these closed banks are now on their own. No corporate socialism is as yet saving them.

One of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank law was to require federal agencies to rein in bank executives’ pay that incentivizes recklessness and even fraud, as Public Citizen noted. Yet after 13 years, PC declared: “a hodgepodge of federal agencies – the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that is supposed to finalize the rule has so far failed to do so.”

Defying mandates of Congress, often riddled with waivers from Capitol Hill, is routine for federal agencies. They know that when it comes to law and order for profiteering corporations, Congress is spineless. Have you heard of any resignations or firings from these sleepy regulatory agencies? Of course not. They continue to raise the ante for corporate socialist rescue even beyond their legal authority. For example, where does the FDIC get the authority to guarantee all the deposits in the failed banks when the Congressional limit is strictly $250,000 per account?

Some people will remember Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson telling the Washington Post that there were “no authorities” for massive bank bailouts – think Citigroup in 2008 during a private weekend meeting in Washington, DC – but, he said, “someone had to do it.”

Meanwhile, the American people remain fearful but silent over the safety of their bank deposits. They heard Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tell Congress that the banking system “remains sound.” Some remember that’s what her predecessor said in the spring of 2008 about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the safest investments after Treasury bonds. By the fall, both of these giants had collapsed taking millions of trusting shareholders down with them.

Finally, all those brilliant economists at the Federal Reserve surely must know that when midsize banks lose almost 20% on the value of their 10-year Treasuries, due to the very fast interest rate hikes by Jerome Powell’s Fed, trouble is on the horizon. Why didn’t they anticipate this outcome and do some foreseeing and forestalling? Nah, why worry, didn’t you know that the Fed prints money?

Or maybe the Federal Reserve (its budget comes from bank fees, not the Congress), couldn’t see beyond fighting inflation, something it did not take seriously in time over a year and a half ago. More than a few outside economists repeatedly gave the Fed fair warning. But then the Fed, hardly ever criticized by the mainstream press, was listening to its brilliant economists.

Stay tuned. This rollercoaster ride is not over yet.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Once again, government socialism—ultimately backed by taxpayers—is saving reckless midsized banks and their depositors. Silicon Valley Bank (S.V.B) and Signature Bank in New York greedily mismanaged their risk levels and had to be closed down. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in return, to avoid a bank panic and a run on other midsized banks went over its $250,000 insurance cap per account and guaranteed all deposits—no matter how large, which are owned by the rich and corporations—in those banks.

Permitting such imprudent risk-taking flows directly from the Trump-GOP Congressional weakening of regulations in 2018, which was supported by dozens of Democrats, led by bank toady Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.). That bipartisan deregulation provided a filibuster-proof passage by the Senate.

The other culprit is the Federal Reserve. Its very fast interest rate hikes reduced the asset value of those two banks’ holdings in long-term Treasury bonds, which reduced their capital reserves. With the "What, me worry?" snooze of the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, SVB had little supervision from state regulatory examiners and compliance enforcers.

Actually, big depositors sniffed the shakiness of these two banks and acted ahead of the regulatory cops with mass withdrawals that sealed the fate of SVB. Imagine, SVB was giving out bonuses hours before its collapse. For this cluelessness, the bank's CEO, Gregory Becker, took home about eleven million dollars in pay last year.

All this was predicted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). Warren, in particular, specifically opposed the 2018 Congressional lifting of stronger liquidity and capital requirements along with regular stress tests for banks with assets over $50 billion. Trump's law allowed the absence of these safeguards to cover banks with assets up to $250 billion. Such de-regulation covered SVB and Signature.

Signature Bank had former House Banking Committee Chair Barney Frank on its board of directors. His name is on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed following the 2008 Wall Street collapse. Even Mr. Frank was clueless about what Signature's CEO Joseph DePaolo was mismanaging. (DePaulo was paid $8.6 million last year.)

Of course, the underfunded FDIC doesn't have enough money to make good all the large depositors in these two banks. So, it is increasing the fees charged to all banks for such government insurance. The banks will find ways to pass these surchargers on to their customers.

Other midsized banks may be shaky as more major depositors pull out and put their money into mega-giant banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup, which are universally viewed as "too big to fail." The smaller businesses harmed by these closed banks are now on their own. No corporate socialism is as yet saving them.

One of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank law was to require federal agencies to rein in bank executives' pay that incentivizes recklessness and even fraud, as Public Citizen noted. Yet after 13 years, PC declared: "a hodgepodge of federal agencies—the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission—that is supposed to finalize the rule has so far failed to do so."

Defying mandates of Congress, often riddled with waivers from Capitol Hill, is routine for federal agencies. They know that when it comes to law and order for profiteering corporations, Congress is spineless. Have you heard of any resignations or firings from these sleepy regulatory agencies? Of course not. They continue to raise the ante for corporate socialist rescue even beyond their legal authority. For example, where does the FDIC get the authority to guarantee all the deposits in the failed banks when the Congressional limit is strictly $250,000 per account?

Some people will remember Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson telling the Washington Post that there were "no authorities" for massive bank bailouts—think Citigroup in 2008 during a private weekend meeting in Washington, DC— but, he said, "someone had to do it."

Meanwhile, the American people remain fearful but silent over the safety of their bank deposits. They heard Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tell Congress that the banking system "remains sound." Some remember that's what her predecessor said in the spring of 2008 about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—the safest investments after Treasury bonds. By the fall, both of these giants had collapsed taking millions of trusting shareholders down with them.

Finally, all those brilliant economists at the Federal Reserve surely must know that when midsize banks lose almost 20% on the value of their 10-year Treasuries, due to the very fast interest rate hikes by Jerome Powell's Fed, trouble is on the horizon. Why didn't they anticipate this outcome and do some foreseeing and forestalling? Nah, why worry, didn't you know that the Fed prints money?

Or maybe the Federal Reserve (its budget comes from bank fees, not the Congress), couldn't see beyond fighting inflation, something it did not take seriously in time over a year and a half ago. More than a few outside economists repeatedly gave the Fed fair warning. But then the Fed, hardly ever criticized by the mainstream press, was listening to its brilliant economists.

Stay tuned. This rollercoaster ride is not over yet.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ralph Nader.

The post Reckless Capitalist Banks Rescued by Government Socialism – Again! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province was praised Tuesday as "an act of humanity" by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that's been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that "Indonesia has helped to save 472 people in the past six weeks from four boats, showing its commitment and respect of basic humanitarian principles for people who face persecution and conflict."

"We feel like we got a new world today... We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us."

"UNHCR urges other states to follow this example. Many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help," the Geneva-based agency added. "States in the region must fulfill their legal obligations by saving people on boats in distress to avoid further misery and deaths."

Ann Maymann, the UNHCR representative in Indonesia, said in a statement that "we welcome this act of humanity by local communities and authorities in Indonesia."

"These actions help to save human lives from certain death, ending torturous ordeals for many desperate people," she added.

The Syndey Morning Heraldreports residents of Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh, rushed to help 58 Malaysia-bound Rohingya men who arrived Sunday in a rickety wooden boat, many of them severely dehydrated and starving.

The following day, 174 more starving Rohingya men, women, and children, were helped ashore by local authorities and fishers after more than a month at sea.

Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, whose 27-year-old sister Hatamonesa was aboard the boat with her 5-year-old daughter, told Pakistan's Arab News that "we feel like we got a new world today."

“We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us," he said of his family. Speaking of his sister, he added that "she thought that she would die in the voyage at sea."

Babar Baloch, the UNHCR regional spokesperson in Bangkok, stated that 26 people had died aboard the rescued vessel, which left Bangladesh a month ago.

"We were raising alarm about this boat in early December because we had information that it was in the regional waters at least at the end of November," he said. "So when we first got reports that it was somewhere near the coast of Thailand, we approached authorities asking them to help, then when it was moving towards Indonesia and Malaysia we did the same."

"After its engine failure and it was drifting in the sea, there were reports of this boat being spotted close to Indian waters and we approached and asked them as well and we were also in touch with authorities in Sri Lanka," Baloch continued.

"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well."

According to the BBC, the Indian navy appears to have towed the boat into Indonesian waters after giving its desperate passengers some food and water. The boat drifted for another six days before it was allowed to land.

"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well," Baloch said. "It is an act in support of humanity, there's no other way to describe it."

Relatives of around 180 other Rohingya who left Bangladesh on December 2 said Tuesday that they fear the overcrowded vessel has sunk in the Andaman Sea. Mohammad Noman, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, toldThe Guardian that his sister was aboard the boat with her two daughters, who are 5 and 3 years old.

"Every day we called up the boat two or three times on the boatman's satellite phone to find out if my sister and her two daughters were all right. Since December 8, I have failed to get access to that phone," he said. "I know some other people in Cox's Bazar who made phone calls to the boat every day and stayed in contact with their relatives there. None of them has succeeded to reach the phone after December 8."

The captain of another vessel transporting Rohingya refugees said he saw the distressed boat swept up in stormy seas sometime during the second week of December.

"It was around 2:00 am when a strong wind began blowing and big waves surfaced on the sea. [Their] boat began swaying wildly, we could gauge from a flashlight they were pointing at us," he told The Guardian. "After some time, we could not see the flashlight anymore. We believe the boat drowned then."

More than a million Rohingya Muslims are crowded into squalid refugee camps in southern Bangladesh after having fled ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and other violence and repression in Rakhine state, Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Since 2020, thousands of Rohingya have fled the camps by sea.

Hundreds have died during the perilous journey. If the sinking of the boat with 180 aboard is confirmed, it would make 2022 the deadliest year for Rohingya at sea, according to UNHCR.

UNHCR's Baloch stressed that "countries and states in the region have international obligations to help desperate people."

"We have been calling on states to go after people smugglers and human traffickers as they are responsible for putting people on those death-trap boats, but victims have to be saved and saving human life is the most important act," he told the Morning Herald.

"The refugee issue and saving lives cannot just be left to one country, it has to be done collectively, together in the region," he added.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.

"Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees," he told the Morning Herald.

"These people are facing genocide in Burma," Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. "It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The victims included Lao workers and foreign nationals from more than 20 different countries, a member of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of Bokeo province who, like other sources in this report, requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA Lao.

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in northern Laos is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese citizens situated in Bokeo province along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. It has become a haven for criminal activities including prostitution, scamming and drug trafficking.  

The SEZ is home to the Kings Romans Casino resort, where many impoverished young Laotians from other provinces and foreigners who were promised lucrative jobs end up held against their will by trafficking rings that exploit them under threat of violence. In 2018, the U.S. government sanctioned the Chinese tycoon who is said to run the SEZ as head of a trafficking network.

Most of the workers who have been rescued from the SEZ had been confined in buildings or in their rooms against their will and deprived of their freedom and other basic rights, the member of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit said.

Most of the human trafficking victims in the Golden Triangle SEZ are foreigners whose embassies requested that Lao authorities rescue them, said a provincial police officer.

“Once rescued, a great number of them are transferred to an immigration center in the capital Vientiane and the rest to an immigration center in Luang Namtha province [bordering China],” he said. 

Most of the victims came to the SEZ to work in the service sector as waiters, waitresses, bartenders, sex workers, and online scammers, known as chatterers, at a call center in the SEZ, said the provincial police officer.

“About half of them were lured to the SEZ, and the other half came here by choice,” he added.

Police refer female workers under the age of 18 to the provincial Lao Women’s Union, a political party organization that provide physical and psychological health services and advice before sending them back to their Lao families or to their respective countries, said the member of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of Bokeo province.

A counselor at the Lao Women’s Union of Bokeo province pointed out that human trafficking is not only in the Golden Triangle SEZ, but everywhere in the greater region.

“Many victims are trafficked to China, many others to Thailand,” she said. “These victims are from poor and remote areas. They need money. They are uneducated and uninformed about the dangers of human trafficking.

Dozens of arrests

Speaking at an annual public security meeting in Vientiane last week, Kenchanh Phommachack, deputy director of the Police Department of the Lao Ministry of Public Security, said Lao police had charged 74 people with human trafficking in the Golden Triangle SEZ between Sept. 1 and Dec. 12 alone.

“Most of the arrested human traffickers are Chinese, Indians, Malaysians and Pakistanis, and most of them are middlemen and small fish who provided shelters and means of transportation to the victims,” the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit official in Bokeo province told RFA.

“As for the big fish like Chinese human trafficking ring leaders, they are uncatchable,” he said. “We know that these gang leaders sometimes torture workers or even kidnap them for ransom.”

According to Kenchanh Phommachack, those charged included 16 foreigners among 27 arrested and detained suspects, he said, adding that police had also rescued 21 human-trafficking victims, including 14 foreign nationals, over the same period.

A former online scammer who fled the SEZ last year told RFA that many of the workers in the SEZ’s call center are Lao, Chinese, Indian and Vietnamese. 

“Their job is to scam other people, lie to them, and convince them to invest in the SEZ,” the person said. “Once they do, they lose all their money for good. They will never get it back.”

“Many Laotians still work there because they don’t have any other job or any other choice. There aren’t many jobs available in Laos,” the former scammer said.

Translated by Max Avary for RFA Lao. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Anita Mureithi.

The three women were promised good jobs, but when they arrived were put to work on fake social media accounts and told to pitch shares of companies within the zone to tourists. RFA reported this week that another group of 15 Thai citizens that had been duped the same way had all returned home, but they warned other Thais were still there.

“I’m glad to be back, and I’ll never return. To other Thais, I’d like to tell them not to fall prey to the ad on Facebook because the SEZ is full of lies. Nothing is real,” one of the three rescued women told local media.

“About the money, they only gave me 1,000 yuan [U.S. $157]. That’s it. They wouldn’t allow us to go outside at all and we were trapped in one building. I’ll never go back,” she said.

The three women were promised 30,000 baht per month ($900). But because they could not meet what they said were unreasonably high sales quotas, the company they were working for threatened to sell them to another business.

A labor official inside the SEZ said his office had no knowledge of the Thai women.

“We have no record of them. They were here in the SEZ, but how did they get here? They had no documents. They must have sneaked in, but through which channel? We don’t know,” the official said.

The Thai Embassy in Laos said it receives requests for help from Thais all over Laos, not just only in the SEZ.

“When they contact us, we coordinate with the Lao authorities to resolve their case,” the embassy said.

The embassy recently issued a warning to Thai citizens in Laos to be wary of job opportunities in SEZ.

“The job seems to be illegal defrauding of other people, and working for criminal gangs, and prostitution. If the workers refuse to do the job, they’ll be fined, even physically abused, deprived of freedom, sold to another employer and have their documents confiscated,” the warning said.

It encouraged Thais in Laos to “be cautious and do not to trust or fall prey to the scamming scheme that is luring people to work in the SEZ.”

A greater number of Lao women have been scammed in a similar way: promised good jobs only to find nightmarish conditions once in SEZ. But Lao government has not done as much to protect its citizens as Bangkok has, sources said.

The Lao victims of the employment bait-and-switch scheme have no one to go to for help, a Lao resident of the capital Vientiane, told RFA’s Lao Service.

“I know some of the Lao women in the SEZ. They say they’ve requested help from the Lao authorities, but they don’t receive any help,” she said on condition of anonymity. “The authorities just say these women don’t have enough information or documentation. So Lao women are on their own. If they can escape, good for them.”

The employment scam has prompted discussions on social media platforms like Facebook about what some commentators see as relative inaction by the Lao government to the problem.

“They never warn us of anything. The ad is still online recruiting more workers,” one Facebook user said. “Look at the Thai authorities. They warn their people. In Laos, there is no news about the Golden Triangle SEZ at all, and no warning published by Lao media.”

The Golden Triangle SEZ is run by Zhao Wei, chairman of the Dok Ngiew Kham Group, with Zhao’s firm holding 80 percent interest and the Lao government holding 20 percent.

Located where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, the Golden Triangle area got its name five decades ago for its central role in heroin production and trafficking.

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department declared Zhao Wei’s business network, centered on Kings Romans Casino, a “transnational criminal organization” and sanctioned Zhao and three other individuals and companies across Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Zhao’s business “exploits this region by engaging in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, bribery and wildlife trafficking, much of which is facilitated through the Kings Romans Casino located within the [Golden Triangle] SEZ,” a Treasury statement said.

The State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report said Laos had increased its overall efforts to combat trafficking, but fell short in victim identification and screening procedures, and failed to adequately investigate suspected perpetrators of sex trafficking.

Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Lao Service.

Middlemen recruited the 15 Thais in December, promising them good jobs in the de-facto Chinese-controlled Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in return for 15,000 bhat (U.S.$450) each.

In January they took small boats across the Mekong River border between Thailand’s Chiang Rai province and Laos’ Bokeo province, arriving in Tonpeung district, home of the Golden Triangle SEZ.

Once there, they began working as online chatters, selling shares in companies within the SEZ to tourists. They immediately realized that the job was not what they had been promised.

Five of them were able to escape in late February by paying brokers to ferry them back to Thailand. Then in early March six more escaped the same way. The final four were rescued and departed Monday on flights to Bangkok.

One of the first to escape was a male resident of Chiang Rai province. He told Chiang Mai News that after the escapees arrived in Laos, they were picked up and quarantined in a building outside the SEZ.

“Then we were taken to the SEZ, quarantined there for 14 more days, then taken to the 9^th floor of a blue building which is strictly well-guarded,” he said.

“On our first day of work, we were taken to a large room with a lot of tables, each of us was given a smart phone, a computer and connection to the internet. There were about 50 workers in the room. Most of them were Chinese and Lao, and there were the 15 of us.”

A woman who was among the group of five to escape first told a Thai reporter that their initial task was to create Facebook pages and Instagram accounts using fake names and photos.

“They said we were working as administrators of the website of the Kings Romans Casino. … Later we were told to disguise ourselves on the fake social media accounts, trying to convince others to invest or buy shares of the company,” she said.

“At this point, we said to our Chinese boss that we wanted to go home, but the boss said that we have to pay the company 100,000 Baht ($3,000),” she said.

The chatters were told they must work 12 hours each day but actually worked about 16 hours with two breaks, another female member of the first five escapees said to the same Thai reporter.

“After we worked for three days, we realized that we were not doing the work that we had actually agreed upon. We wanted to stop working on the fourth day, but our boss insisted that we continue, or else we would be sold into prostitution,” she said.

Living conditions were harsh, and the sales goals were nearly impossible to achieve, a second male escapee in the initial group of five said.

“We didn’t get paid at all. We stayed all together in a bedroom and received two meals a day. If we couldn’t reach the target, they would threaten to sell us to another company. Because we were new, we couldn’t do much,” he said.

“One of the workers who was there for a long time said she was able to convince a customer to transfer 10 million baht ($300,000). After a week, our boss asked us to sign a labor contract that stated that we’ll get paid 25,000 Baht ($750) per month and two months later, we’ll get 30,000 baht ($900) plus commission.”

It was then that they realized they had been tricked.

“In mid-February this year, we contacted the Chiang Rai Governor’s Office and the Thai Embassy in Laos who advised us not to sign the contracts, and to wait, as help was on the way,” he said.

Pasakorn Boonyalak, governor of Chiang Rai Province, sent a letter to the governor of Bokeo Province on Feb. 21, requesting the Lao authorities to help rescue the Thais trapped in the SEZ.

A day later, the first group of five decided to escape back to Chiang Rai Province, their home province.

“My four friends and I (3 male and 2 female) were able to escape thanks to a Lao woman who worked at the first quarantine center,” the second male escapee said.

“We asked this woman whether there were any ways that we could escape. She told us that there was a Lao man who can help us, but we would have to pay 30,500 Baht ($911) per person to escape and 14,000 Baht ($418) per person for a boat ride across the Mekong River. We called our families, and one family pawned their home for their son’s freedom,” he said.

The third male escapee, identified as Mr. C, said that he had been assigned to sell shares to European customers because of his English skills.

“I realized that this job was illegal and immoral, so I convinced four others to escape. We left the blue building at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 22, leaving behind all the belongings in our bedroom. We dressed in dark colors, then ran away from the security guards to the back of the blue building,” he said.

“We continued to walk for almost one hour. When we got to a village we were picked up by car. I don’t remember how long and how far it was, but we later got to the Mekong River where the Lao man was waiting with a small boat,” Mr. C said.

Once they arrived in Thailand, they were taken to a rubber plantation where a Thai man held them until he received electronic payment from and the Lao man. Once that was done, the Thai man dropped them off at a local market in Chiang Sen, Chiang Rai province.

“About a week after, I found out that six other Thais also escaped exactly the same way we did; one of the six paid up to 90,000 Baht ($3,000) for his part for the escape. Now, only four in our group are still trapped in the SEZ and all of them have been traded to another scamming gang. I’d like to ask the authorities to rescue them and many other Thai nationals in the SEZ as soon as possible,” Mr. C said.

A Lao official in Bokeo Province told RFA’s Lao Service Monday that authorities assisted the final four in returning home.

“After we received the request from the governor of Chiang Rai Province, we wrote a letter asking the Golden Triangle SEZ Management to look at every building if there were any Thai workers there,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The first group of escapees on Monday went to a police station in Chiang Rai to assist with the investigation. There they formally asked the Thai authorities to rescue the remaining four, as well as other Thais who may be trapped in the SEZ.

Police Lieut. Gen. Torsak Sukwimol, assistant to the Thai police commissioner, told reporters in late February that the case was similar to a previous human trafficking case.

“We believe that this case is no different. There might be many other groups of Thai workers on the Lao side,” he said.

Thai media reported Tuesday that the four remaining Thais flew back to Thailand that morning.

One of the four said their rescue happened suddenly.

“We were told to take our clothes and other belongings, then we were on a plane back to Thailand, without having to pay for it,” the rescued Thai citizen said.

One of the first group of escapees, under condition of anonymity, told RFA that there are many Thais still trapped in the SEZ.

“One of my Thai friends told me there were at least 90 Thais working in her company,” the escapee said.

The Golden Triangle SEZ is run by Zhao Wei, chairman of the Dok Ngiew Kham Group, with Zhao’s firm holding 80 percent interest and the Lao government holding 20 percent.

Located where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet, the Golden Triangle area got its name five decades ago for its central role in heroin production and trafficking.

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department declared Zhao Wei’s business network, centered on Kings Romans Casino, a “transnational criminal organization” and sanctioned Zhao and three other individuals and companies across Laos, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Zhao’s business “exploits this region by engaging in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, bribery and wildlife trafficking, much of which is facilitated through the Kings Romans Casino located within the GT SEZ,” a Treasury statement said.

Laos, which has been under U.S. pressure for years to crack down on trafficking, last year remained at tier 2 in the annual State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, avoiding cuts to certain types of foreign aid that are imposed on tier 3 countries.

The 2021 report said Laos increased its overall efforts to combat trafficking, but fell short in victim identification and screening procedures, and failed to adequately investigate suspected perpetrators of sex trafficking.

RFA reported in December that many Lao women go into debt to work in the SEZ as “chat girls” in the same capacity as the 15 Thais. One source in that report said that sales quotas are set impossibly high so that the women will fail to meet them, and the companies can more easily sell them into the sex trade.

Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

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