2024-04-16 02:14:21
image captionRabi, a victim of human trafficking, was tortured for 16 daysArticle related information
WARNING: This article contains depictions of violence, sexual assault, and other scenes that may be somewhat disturbing.
“They took off my clothes and made me sit on a chair. Then he gave an electric shock to my leg. “I thought I was going to die now.”
Ravi (pseudonym), a 24-year-old young man from Sri Lanka, moved to Thailand to get an IT-related job. But instead of working in a high-rise building in Bangkok, he ended up trapped in a dark building in Myanmar.
Ravi is a victim of human trafficking from Mae Sot, western Thailand, across the river to Myanmar.
From there, Ravi was sold to numerous fraud centers run by Chinese-speaking gangs. They gathered human trafficking victims like Ravi here and encouraged them to commit online fraud for a long time.
The idea was to create a false online identity and pretend to be a woman to fool lonely men in the United States and Europe. She then persuades her weakened counterpart to invest a large sum of money with the promise of quick returns. Of course, that trading platform is also fake.
The so-called “cyber slave” center where Ravi was held was hidden in the jungle near Myawaddy, Myanmar, on the border with Thailand. This is an area beyond the direct control of the Myanmar military government.
According to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), thousands of young people from Asia, East Africa, South America, and Western Europe are being lured into these cyber crime centers by being deceived by promises of IT-related jobs.
Those who do not follow orders to participate in the fraud are subjected to assault, torture, and rape.
In an interview with the BBC, Ravi confessed, “I was locked up for 16 days because I did not obey them,” and “they only gave me water mixed with cigarette butts and ash.”
In addition, Ravi said, “On the fifth or sixth day of being trapped, two girls were brought in, and the girls were raped by 17 men in front of their eyes.”
“One of the (victim) girls was a Filipino citizen. “I’m not sure about the other girl’s nationality.”
Who are the victims of human trafficking?
Last August, the United Nations estimated that more than 120,000 people in Myanmar alone and 100,000 in Cambodia alone had been coerced into participating in various online scams ranging from illegal gambling to cryptocurrency scams.
In addition, INTERPOL revealed in a report last year that such online fraud centers are prevalent not only in Myanmar, but also in Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam.
An Interpol spokesperson told the BBC that employment fraud has expanded from a regional problem to a global one, with multiple countries involved as fraud centers, transit points for human trafficking and victims’ countries of origin.
For example, the Indian government announced earlier this month that it had rescued a total of 250 of its citizens who had been trafficked to Cambodia, and last month the Chinese government also brought back hundreds of its citizens from fraud centers in Myanmar.
Chinese authorities are also putting pressure on Myanmar’s military government and armed groups to shut down these fraud centers.
While Sri Lankan authorities estimate that at least 56 of their citizens are being held in four regions in Myanmar, Sri Lankan Ambassador to Myanmar Janaka Bandara said in an interview with the BBC that eight people were recently rescued with the help of the Myanmar government.
Meanwhile, from the perspective of those who run these centers, there is a steady influx of targetable migrant workers.
In South Asia alone, hundreds of thousands of engineers, doctors, nurses and IT professionals move abroad every year to find work.
Ravi is also a computer expert. While desperately trying to leave Sri Lanka, which was suffering from an economic crisis, to find a job abroad, she met a local recruiter in Bangkok who offered data entry jobs.
This recruiter and a colleague from Dubai promised Ravi that he could receive a basic salary of 370,000 Sri Lankan rupees (about 1.7 million won).
Ravi and his wife, who had just gotten married, dreamed of earning this money to build their own house, so they even took out loans from various sources to cover the fees from local real estate agents.
From Thailand to Myanmar
Early last year, several Sri Lankans, including Ravi, were sent first to Bangkok and then to Mae Sot, near the border with Myanmar.
“We headed to the hotel, but were soon handed over to two men with guns,” Ravi recalled. “The men took us across the river to Myanmar.”
They were taken to a center run by Chinese-speaking gang members, where they were told they were not allowed to take pictures.
“We were scared,” Ravi said. “About 40 young men and women from various countries, including Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Africa, were forcibly stranded at the center there,” he explained.
image copyrightGetty Images
Photo captionLau Khaing, a region on the Myanmar-China border, has emerged as a hub for gambling, drugs and fraud rings
According to Ravi, it was surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, and gun-toting gunmen guarded the entrance 24 hours a day, making it impossible to escape.
There, Ravi and other young men were forced to work up to 22 hours a day. There was only one day off per month. They had to target at least three men every day.
Those who did not comply suffered beatings or torture. There was no way to escape unless a ransom was paid.
Meanwhile, Neil Vijay (21) from Maharashtra, western India, succeeded in escaping using this method.
In August 2002, Vijay was trafficked to Myanmar along with five other Indian men and two Filipino women.
In an interview with the BBC, Vijay recalled that one day, a friend of his mother’s from his hometown called him and asked for 150,000 Indian rupees (about 2.4 million won) as a brokerage fee, saying that there was a job at a call center in Bangkok.
“There were several businesses run by Chinese speakers,” said Vijay. “They were all scammers. “We were sold out to these companies,” he said.
“When I got there I lost hope. “If my mother hadn’t given them the ransom, I would have been tortured like everyone else.”
Vijay refused to participate in the scam, and his family had to pay 600,000 Indian rupees to rescue him.
However, it is said that cruel punishment followed those who were unable to pay the ransom or did not reach the fraud amount target set by the organization.
Vijay, who managed to escape, returned to India with the help of Thai authorities. And Vijay’s family is taking legal action against local media agencies in India.
image copyrightNOPPORN WICHACHAT
image captionNeel Vijay, a victim of human trafficking, managed to return to India after two weeks with the help of Thai authorities
Meanwhile, the Thai government is working with other countries to help victims return. But Piya Raksakul, deputy director of Thailand’s Ministry of Justice’s Department of Special Investigations (DSI), told the BBC that the number of those rescued was far too small compared to the number of victims forcibly detained in fraud centers in the nearby Southeast Asian country.
“The international community needs to do more to communicate about these types of fraud, including raising public awareness of these criminal organizations so that people can protect themselves,” said Deputy Director Raksakul.
According to Deputy Director Raksakul, human traffickers use Bangkok as a hub for fraud in Southeast Asia. This is because citizens of India, Sri Lanka, etc. can enter Thailand with just a visa on arrival.
“Criminals are taking advantage of this to recruit victims to scam them,” he explained.
How does it happen?
According to Ravi, the main targets were wealthy men, especially men in Western countries. First, he uses stolen phone numbers, SNS accounts, and messaging platforms to form romantic relationships with them.
They contacted the victims directly. Sometimes, it seemed like a simple message like ‘Hello’ was accidentally sent in error.
According to Ravi, some men ignored these messages, but those who were lonely or looking for sex often fell for the lure.
Once the victims took the bait, the young women detained at the center had to take sexually explicit photos to keep them captive.
image copyrightNOPPORN WICHACHAT
Photo captionNeil Vijay, a victim from India, was rescued by Thai authorities and was able to safely cross the river
After gaining their trust by exchanging hundreds of messages in just a few days, they lure these men into investing large sums of money in a fake online trading platform.
A fake app was also used to show false investment status and profit information.
Ravi said, “If someone transferred $100,000 (approximately 130 million won), $50,000 was first returned as profit. “If you do that, the victim will think he has $150,000, but in reality, only half of the $100,000 he originally sent will remain, and we will take the rest,” he explained.
After securing as much cash as possible from the victims, they delete their messaging platform accounts and SNS profiles and disappear.
It is difficult to estimate the exact scale of these romance scams, but according to the ‘Internet Crime Report’ published by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last year, more than 17,000 complaints related to fraud crimes using romance or trust were received in the United States alone. The total amount of damage is said to be $652 million.
psychological and physical injuries
Meanwhile, Ravi, who had been held captive for a month, was sold to another gang when the “business” that initially held him went “bankrupt.” It is said that he was handed over to three gangs while he was held in Myanmar for a total of six months.
Ravi told his new gang members that he could no longer fool people and begged them to let him return to Sri Lanka.
One day, Ravi had a conflict with the team leader and was taken to a cell and tortured for 16 days.
Finally, the “Chinese boss” came and offered Ravi a “last chance” to work again based on his expertise in computer software.
Ravi said, “I had no choice. “Half my body was already paralyzed,” she recalled.
image copyrightNOPPORN WICHACHAT
Photo caption: This photo was taken by a victim who was released from a cyber fraud center in Myanmar while heading to the border.
For four months, Ravi managed his Facebook account using a VPN, an artificial intelligence (AI) app, and a 3D video camera. He then prayed to be allowed to visit his sick mother in Sri Lanka.
Accordingly, a high-ranking member of the gang offered to release him if he paid a ransom of 600,000 Sri Lankan rupees and the cost of traveling across the river to Thailand, 200,000 Sri Lankan rupees.
Ravi’s parents managed to raise this money by mortgaging their house, and so Ravi was able to head back to Mae Sot.
However, Ravi’s parents were fined 20,000 Thai baht (about 750,000 won) at the Thai airport for not having a visa, so Ravi’s parents had to take out another loan.
“When I arrived in Sri Lanka, my accumulated debt amounted to 1.85 million rupees,” Ravi said.
Ravi was finally able to return to his hometown, but he can’t even see his newly married wife often.
Ravi said in a bitter voice, “I work tirelessly in the garage day and night to pay off this debt. “My wife and I pawned all of our wedding rings to repay the interest,” he concluded.
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