Correspondent of Southeast Asia
More than 250 people from 20 nationality who worked at the telecommunications centers for fraud in the Mjanmar State Karen published an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.
Workers, more than half of which were from African or Asian countries, received a Thai army and are estimated to discover whether they are victims of human trade.
Last week, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met with Chinese leader XI Jinping and promised to close the fraud centers that spread along the Thai-Mianmar border.
Her government stopped access to power and fuel from the Thai side of the border and tightened the rules of banking and visa to try to prevent fraud operators from using Thailand as a transit country to move workers and cash.
Some opposition lawmakers in Thailand have encouraged this type of action in the last two years.
Foreign workers are usually lured in these centers to fraud offers of good salaries or in some cases deceived by thinking that they will do a different job in Thailand and not on Mjanmar.
Frauds seek workers with skills in the languages of those who are targeted for Cyber-Fraud, usually English and Chinese.
They were instructed to perform internet criminal activities, ranging from love frauds known as the “pork butcher” and crypto fraud, to money laundering and illegal gambling.
Some are willing to do the job, but others are forced to stay, and the release is only possible if their families pay large ransom. Some of those who escaped described the torture.
The published foreign workers were handed over by a democratic well -intentioned Karen army, DKBA, one of several armed fractions that control the territory within the Karen State.
These armed groups are accused of allowing fraudsters to act under their protection and tolerate a wide abuse of victims of trade that are forced to work in the compounds.
The Mijar Government could not expand its control over most of the state of Karen from independence in 1948.
On Tuesday, the Thai Department of Special Investigation, which is similar to the US FBI, requested an arrest warrant for three commanders of the second armed group known as the National Army Karen.
The orders were also included by Chit Thu, Karen Warlord, who in 2017 made an agreement with the Chinese company for the construction of SHWE KOKKO, a new city believed to be largely funded by fraud.
BBC visited Shwe Kokko on call yataia company that built the city.
Yatai says that there is no more fraud in Shwe Kokko. He has set huge pans throughout the city that has declared, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced work is not allowed and that “internet companies” should leave.
But the locals told us that the fraud job was still engaged in and interviewed the worker who was employed in one.
Like DKBA, he saw Chit Thu bounced off the main rebel group Karen, Knu, in 1994 and joined with the Mijar Army.
Under the pressure of Thailand and China, they both saw Chit Thu and DKBA said they expel companies for fraud from their territories.
DKBA commander contacted a member of the Thai Parliament on Tuesday to organize a handover of 260 workers.
They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Philippine, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, and Ghana,.
