YANGON: Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Tuesday (Jan 21) it had deported to China more than 50,000 people suspected of involvement in online scam operations since October 2023, as it made a rare call to neighbouring countries to intervene.
Scam compounds have mushroomed in Myanmar’s borderlands and are staffed by foreigners who are often trafficked and forced to work, swindling their compatriots in an industry analysts say is worth billions of dollars.
An editorial published in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Tuesday detailed the extent of the criminal activities – including online scams and gambling – publicly for the first time.
It said the junta had caught and deported over 55,000 foreigners involved in border scams to their home countries since October 2023, over 53,000 of them to China.
The second-largest contingent – over a thousand individuals – was from Vietnam, followed by Thailand with over 600. The rest came from around 25 other countries, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar.
The article added those responsible were not Myanmar nationals or ordinary foreign civilians but “fugitive offenders” who illegally entered Myanmar from neighbouring countries.
The junta called on its neighbours to “participate in combating online scams and online gambling”.
AFP has contacted Thai and Chinese authorities for comment.
Myanmar’s northern border with China was previously a hotbed for online scam centres often run by militias aligned with the ruling junta.
But a sweeping offensive by an alliance of ethnic rebels cleared many of the scam centres out.
Local Myanmar media have reported that scam bosses who escaped the offensive have since set up shop further south along the border with Thailand.
Myanmar’s junta and Thai military officials have agreed to “jointly eradicate online gambling and online scams”, according to Myanmar state media.
Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, on Friday called the compounds “one of the most pressing regional crises the region is facing”.
The Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the military junta ousted democratically elected civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from office in a 2021 coup.