Myanmar detains over 10K foreigners in online scam centre crackdown

 

Myanmar’s military government has detained more than 10,000 foreign nationals over the past nine months who the junta said illegally entered the country for involvement in online scams. 

Of the 10,119 people detained through Oct 27 in a joint crackdown with China and Thailand, about 9,340 have been repatriated, the Ministry of Information said Tuesday. Arrangements are being made to return the rest, it added.

 

The move comes as the international community pressures the junta to dismantle billion-dollar scam networks. Last month, the US sanctioned several companies in Shwe Kokko, a major scam hub it said is controlled by an ethnic armed group allied with the junta. 

Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun blamed the Karen National Union, an ethnic army fighting the military, for allowing scam networks in KK Park near the Thai-Myanmar border. He accused KNU leaders of profiting from leasing land and providing security for the gambling hub.

 

 

Saw Taw Nee, the KNU’s head of foreign affairs, said in an interview that the group denies all the allegations by the junta. “They have done it for years for the sake of their interests but when the international community pressures on them, they try to find a culprit and pin this on us,” he said.

 

Local media reported scam center bosses abandoned KK Park after the junta’s raid last week. More than 1,000 people, mostly Chinese, fled from Myanmar into Thailand, Agence France-Presse reported, citing Thai authorities. 

 

“Most people were fleeing. It was like the end of the world,” Saw Taw Nee said, referring to several explosions in the area. 

 

With internet restrictions in place, scam centers in Myanmar relied heavily on Starlink connections. SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, said last week it had disabled more than 2,500 Starlink devices suspected of being used by cybercrime groups. Saw Taw Nee said the actual number may be higher, as the network “was widely used there.”

 

KNU said the junta’s renewed crackdown on scams is meant to ease Chinese pressure and win Beijing’s support ahead of an election. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has pledged to hold the vote in phases and transfer power, though Western governments, including the US, have dismissed it as a sham.

 

Criminal networks in places such as Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are operating “industrial-scale cyber-enabled fraud and scam centers, driven by sophisticated transnational syndicates and interconnected networks of money launderers, human traffickers, data brokers and a growing number of other specialist service providers and facilitators,” the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report this year.