MYWADDY, Myanmar — The more than 10 Chinese men packed into a room in a former scam-operating center near Myawaddy on the border with Thailand may have been freed from forced work, but for now, there is nowhere else for them to go.
Their frustration was evident in an interview with Kyodo News on Wednesday. Desperate to return to China as soon as possible, they shouted in unison, “We want to go home!”
The Chinese were among some 7,700 foreign nationals who have been rescued by Myanmar ethnic armed groups since last month from forced labor for online scam syndicates operating in the border area.
But due to a lack of places to accommodate them in areas controlled by the armed groups prior to their repatriation, many remain at overcrowded scam centers.
Some of the Chinese men at a compound called KK Park said that they had been lured by fake offers of computer jobs, adding that an electrified bar was used as a punishment by their bosses when they disobeyed orders.
“We didn’t know it was a scam, and we’ve been forced to work for months or years,” one of the Chinese men said.
Another group of Chinese men complained about their living conditions. Air conditioners were not working Wednesday because of an electricity outage and some of them were shirtless.
Groups of Filipinos were held in other rooms. A Filipino woman said she and her fellow call center workers faced punishment for failing to get customers for the phone scams, saying, “The harsh supervisor ordered us to run up and down (the stairs of) the building when we failed to get clients.”
According to one of the local ethnic armed groups, the Border Guard Force, around 3,100 foreigners are currently held at former scam compounds in Myawaddy’s outskirts after it and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army took those freed from the scam centers into protective custody. Some of the others are being held at BGF facilities.
The crackdown was conducted in cooperation with Thailand, and the ethnic armed groups are calling for it and other countries whose citizens are among the rescued workers to speed up repatriation.
The syndicates running the scams had rented land for their centers from the BGF. The group had reportedly tolerated the activities of the syndicates, which disguised themselves as entertainment or other businesses. But the BGF began to crack down on them last month after Thailand and China started to take measures against the syndicates.
Lt. Col. Naing Maung Saw, deputy commander of the BGF, told reporters Wednesday that the BGF has had to pause its operations to rescue more foreigners from scam syndicates for the moment because of the limited facilities to hold them before sending them back to their home countries.