Last month, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra visited China and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The two leaders discussed several issues, including cross-border telecom fraud. Xi expressed his approval of the Thai government’s efforts to combat online gambling and telecom fraud, emphasizing that both countries should continue to bolster law enforcement, security and judicial cooperation to safeguard people’s lives and property.
However, the effectiveness of these measures is questionable — fraudulent activity continues to thrive along the Thai-Myanmar border and the number of people who have been affected is steadily rising.
Meanwhile, the Malaysia International Humanitarian Organisation (MHO) on Feb. 12 organized a peaceful petition in front of the Thai embassy in Malaysia, where the family members of more than 50 people taken by human traffickers called on the Thai government to assist in rescuing Malaysians trapped in scam operations in Myanmar.
The MHO says that the majority of the people taken are lured into traveling to the Thai border before being transferred to scam compounds in Myanmar or Laos.
More than 99 percent of the masterminds behind the scammer organizations are Chinese, it says.
That echoes several external reports highlighting that many core operators of cross-border scammer organizations are from China, particularly those in the Kokan region of Myanmar’s Shan State, a region ruled by the “four big families” — Bai (白), Wei (魏), Liu (劉) and Ming (明) — who have established large-scale scam compounds.
Using internal Chinese networks, they attract and recruit people to cross the border for work, only to use them as slave labor for their scammer organizations — some are even subjected to abuse or trafficking.
The Thai government has recently launched several measures in response, including cutting off power supplies in some border areas to weaken the operational capabilities of scam sites.
However, collaboration between scammer organizations and local armed rebel groups has led to significant obstacles for cross-border law enforcement operations and limited the effectiveness of their efforts to combat scams.
As the governments of Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and China face increasingly severe challenges, curbing fraud and human trafficking through international cooperation has become a critical issue in regional security.
Elliot Yao is a reviewer.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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