Around forty foreigners, mainly from Sri Lanka, fled an online scam center which exploited them in Burma, and found refuge in Thailand, Thai police told AFP on Monday.
“All foreigners are checked to see if they are victims of human trafficking,” said Pittayakorn Petcharat, police chief in the northern town of Mae Sot.
The police identified 32 Sri Lankans, five Nepalese, one Malaysian and one Russian, making 39 individuals in total, he detailed.
The group crossed the border Sunday evening, said a member of the security forces, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
They were fleeing Myawaddy, a Burmese town located opposite Mae Sot, controlled by a militia close to the ruling junta, and a notorious hub for drug production and all kinds of online malfeasance.
Burma’s border regions are home to numerous centers that exploit a workforce of foreigners duped by fake, tempting job offers, and forced by force to deceive their compatriots on the Internet, via cryptocurrency fraud or love scams.
The sector, which thrives in lawless areas favored by the ongoing civil conflict since the 2021 coup, is worth several billion dollars a year, according to analysts.
In December, the head of Myanmar’s junta and representatives of the Thai military agreed to “jointly eradicate online gambling and online scam centers near Myawaddy,” according to state media Burmese.
At least 120,000 people in Myanmar could be forced to run online scams, according to a United Nations report published in 2023.
Many victims were subjected to torture, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labor and other human rights violations, according to the text.
