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China families appeal to free relatives held by scam gangs in Myanmar
Families start grassroots campaign after actor rescued * Appeal for trafficking victims includes nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals * Beijing says 'making every effort' to rescue those trafficked By Larissa Liao, Kevin Krolicki and Poppy McPherson BEIJING/BANGKOK, Jan 22 (Reuters) - The abduction and cross-border rescue had all the makings of the kind of action script struggling Chinese actor Wang Xing had hoped to land - only not as a reality star. Wang, 31, flew to Bangkok earlier this month after getting an unsolicited offer to join a film that was shooting in Thailand.
There was no movie. Instead, like hundreds of other Chinese men, Wang had been duped by a job offer that he later acknowledged appeared too good to be true, as part of a trap set by a criminal syndicate. Like others desperate for work, he was kidnapped and put to work in one of the online scam centres that operate just across the Thai border in Myanmar, siswa 19 plus according to his account and statements by police in China and Thailand.
But unlike most trafficked Chinese whose families wait in quiet anguish, Wang had a powerful advocate back home. His girlfriend, who goes by the nickname Jiajia, broadcast details of Wang's abduction and started a social media campaign documenting her battle to get him back to China, picking up millions of followers and the support of Chinese celebrities. When Wang was freed on Jan. 7 by Thai police, who said he had been found in Myanmar but gave few details about his release, frustrated families of other Chinese people still detained in the Myanmar scam centres began to post details of their own cases in an attempt to capitalise on the attention.
Within days, the rare grassroots effort had collected the names of nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals that family members said had been trafficked into Myanmar from border areas of China and Thailand. Scam compounds, where workers are often treated brutally, have proliferated in Myanmar amid the chaos and widening civil war since the military seized power in a 2021 coup. The UN says hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to scam centres in Southeast Asia since the COVID-siswa 19 plus pandemic in an industry that defrauds people across the globe and generates billions of dollars per year for organised crime groups, many of Chinese origin.
The tally, which organisers said had been handed over to Chinese authorities, quickly became the most detailed census of Chinese victims of the syndicates that trap people into working online scams from towns like Myawaddy, on Myanmar´s border with Thailand. In an unusual statement issued on Friday, China's Ministry of Public Security said it was "making every effort" to crack down on the scam compounds and "rescue trafficked people." On Tuesday, China's state broadcaster said Beijing had reached a consensus with Thailand and Myanmar to arrest the syndicates' leaders and eradicate the scam centres.
After a surge in crimes targeting Chinese citizens, Beijing initially moved in 2023 to combat the Myanmar fraud compounds, resulting in the arrest of tens of thousands of Chinese nationals suspected of involvement in the illicit business. That reflected China's approach to treat those trafficked primarily as suspects rather than victims, siswa 19 plus according to groups that fight human trafficking.
There was no movie. Instead, like hundreds of other Chinese men, Wang had been duped by a job offer that he later acknowledged appeared too good to be true, as part of a trap set by a criminal syndicate. Like others desperate for work, he was kidnapped and put to work in one of the online scam centres that operate just across the Thai border in Myanmar, siswa 19 plus according to his account and statements by police in China and Thailand.
But unlike most trafficked Chinese whose families wait in quiet anguish, Wang had a powerful advocate back home. His girlfriend, who goes by the nickname Jiajia, broadcast details of Wang's abduction and started a social media campaign documenting her battle to get him back to China, picking up millions of followers and the support of Chinese celebrities. When Wang was freed on Jan. 7 by Thai police, who said he had been found in Myanmar but gave few details about his release, frustrated families of other Chinese people still detained in the Myanmar scam centres began to post details of their own cases in an attempt to capitalise on the attention.
Within days, the rare grassroots effort had collected the names of nearly 1,800 Chinese nationals that family members said had been trafficked into Myanmar from border areas of China and Thailand. Scam compounds, where workers are often treated brutally, have proliferated in Myanmar amid the chaos and widening civil war since the military seized power in a 2021 coup. The UN says hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to scam centres in Southeast Asia since the COVID-siswa 19 plus pandemic in an industry that defrauds people across the globe and generates billions of dollars per year for organised crime groups, many of Chinese origin.
The tally, which organisers said had been handed over to Chinese authorities, quickly became the most detailed census of Chinese victims of the syndicates that trap people into working online scams from towns like Myawaddy, on Myanmar´s border with Thailand. In an unusual statement issued on Friday, China's Ministry of Public Security said it was "making every effort" to crack down on the scam compounds and "rescue trafficked people." On Tuesday, China's state broadcaster said Beijing had reached a consensus with Thailand and Myanmar to arrest the syndicates' leaders and eradicate the scam centres.
After a surge in crimes targeting Chinese citizens, Beijing initially moved in 2023 to combat the Myanmar fraud compounds, resulting in the arrest of tens of thousands of Chinese nationals suspected of involvement in the illicit business. That reflected China's approach to treat those trafficked primarily as suspects rather than victims, siswa 19 plus according to groups that fight human trafficking.
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