The young man has been handcuffed to the ceiling, beaten until his buttocks turned purple, and received electric shocks to his feet. That’s how his captors treat him inside a scam compound in Myanmar where he has been trapped since October, according to his mother, who showed VOA a photograph sent by her son’s captors of what she says is his beaten body.
The mother, who asked that her name and that of her son not be published for fear of retaliation by the captors, says her 24-year-old Malaysian son traveled to Thailand for a vacation. She doesn’t know how he ended up in neighboring Myanmar.
However, a few weeks ago, his family expected his release after they paid about $16,000 in ransom, but his mother said that they were tricked by the criminal syndicate and that there’s no end in sight for this ordeal.
“I lost all my money and still did not get him back,” the mother said. “It’s very heartbreaking. I have been crying for many days.”
In parts of Southeast Asia, this story has become all too common.
“Over the last several years, hundreds of thousands of people have been brought to the region, many of them via various forms of coercion, deception and human trafficking, to be involved in a very lucrative global industry of organized cybercrime,” said Jake Sims, a visiting expert at the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace.
“The main hubs for these scam compounds are in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos because of corruption, governance gaps and an absence of effective rule of law,” he said.
The governments of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have not replied to VOA requests for comments.
Sims said the trafficking victims come from around the world, but most are from East Asia and Southeast Asia. The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime has described Southeast Asia as “ground zero for the global scamming industry.”
Last year, the United Nations estimated that more than 200,000 people were forced to work in scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar alone.
According to the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the scam centers “generate revenue amounting to billions of U.S. dollars each year.” And despite warnings by human rights advocates as well as reports in local and international media, the problem is worsening, according to Sims.
“This industry is growing and will likely continue to grow for some time,” Sims said. “This industry is defrauding the world to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year. So, there’s a lot of incentive for these criminal organizations to keep operating.”
Victims are often lured by a false promise of a good job opportunity, only to find themselves trapped inside a guarded compound where they’re forced to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week, befriending people on social media and dating apps and persuading them to invest their money in cryptocurrency scams. Those who refuse risk violence.
“There are widespread reports of torture, mysterious deaths — all kinds of issues that are emerging for people who either fail to comply or fail to succeed at the tasks that have been given to them,” Sims said.
He added that some victims are completely unaware of the scam syndicates until they’re trapped. In other cases, Sims said, victims understand the risks but are so financially desperate that they’re willing to take them.
One Malaysian father, who insisted on anonymity, has a 27-year-old son trapped in a compound in Myanmar. The parent told VOA he received videos of his son being tortured. The family is now paying almost $1,000 a month in ransom to prevent further violence to him.
Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, a Bangkok-based consultancy, said other countries in the region are not putting enough pressure on the governments of Cambodia and Laos and the junta in Myanmar.
“They need to find levers that really bring pain to these governments and force them to have another approach,” Robertson said. “Without that, these criminal networks in these countries will continue to have impunity.”
Zsombor Peter contributed to this report.
