Indians forced to work as cyber criminals in Myanmar .

 

Indians forced to work as cyber criminals in Myanmar .

      About 300 Indians held hostage in Myanmar’s Myawaddy are forced to work as cyber criminals. Their passports have been seized . These people work for 16 hours a day without any pay and are tortured if they refuse to work . The “billion-dollar casino and tourism complex” in Myanmar is called Shwe Kokko, which is owned by Chinese businessman She Zhijiang . According to a Times of India report, hostages are electrocuted if they refuse to work at KK Park. One hostage told the publication that the camp where these people work is enclosed by high boundary walls manned by guards armed with sniper rifles .

                                                   

            “We are slaves now. They have transformed us into cyber-criminals committing large-scale data fraud every day just to stay alive,” a hostage told the publication. The phishing targets are mostly in Australia and New Zealand . The Keralites were trapped by offering them jobs as data operators in Thailand between July and August. These people were abducted at the airport in Thailand and were trafficked to Myanmar by making them illegally cross the border through a forest at gunpoint .

      “We knew we were being kidnapped the moment we realised that the armed persons travelling with us from the airport were not there to protect us,” a hostage told the publication, adding, “We were briefed on the rules and regulations, the crucial one being that they will shoot us and dump the body, along with our passport, at the Thailand border if we try to escape." 
           Social activist Amjed Ullah Khan told, "Nine people have returned to India. Some of them were made to pay ransoms in cryptocurrency. On Thursday, the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra of the external affairs ministry provided telephone numbers and an email ID to be shared with victims in need of help .

     A man was abducted by a Chinese gang & forced to work in a scam operation . He had been promised a generous salary. A better work-life balance. A chance to live in the vibrant metropolis of Bangkok. His fluency in English would be put to good use as a translator for an e-commerce company, the recruiter had said . More than anything else, Neo Lu, a 28-year-old Chinese office worker, believed the gig would be the new start he needed to save money for his dream of emigrating to the West. So in June of last year, he said his goodbyes, flew to Thailand and headed for his new job.

                                                      

            But when he arrived, his head was spinning from the scorching sun — and the feeling that something was very wrong. Instead of an office building in a city, Mr. Lu had been dumped at what looked like a labor camp haphazardly built on a patch of jungle and muddy fields. Within the compound were spartan, low-rise concrete buildings with barred windows and doors. Two men in combat fatigues, carrying rifles, guarded the main entrance. High walls and fences topped with razor wire surrounded the compound, clearly meant to keep not only outsiders at bay, but also those inside from leaving .

      As Mr. Lu quickly realized, there was, in fact, no translation job. No e-commerce company, either. It had all been part of a ruse, starting with a posting on a Chinese job forum, perfected by human traffickers to get people like him to travel to Thailand.  On Thursday, 21 Malaysians rescued from human traffickers in Cambodia and Laos returned home. Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said the government has now rescued 273 people out of 401 reported missing in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Most have returned except for 60 still in immigration detention centers in those countries who are waiting to be processed, he said.

                              

      A U.N. envoy has said the scam networks, which often have links to transnational organized crime, are set up in countries with weak law enforcement, attracting educated young workers with promises of high earnings. The workers are then subject to isolation and the threat of violence unless they succeed in cheating victims reached by phone into transferring payments into overseas bank accounts .

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Suvendu, Mamata & Nishan Singha.(Asia,India,Odisha,Balasore,Jaleswar)