DHAKA: Bangladesh police on Saturday found the bullet-ridden bodies of two alleged Rohingya drug dealers in a southeastern coastal town notorious for its connection with the Myanmar meth trade.
Teknaf town police chief Prodip Kumar Das said the bodies were found lying next to a highway beside the sea and some 10,000 meth pills were recovered from their possession.
“Both of these refugees were... notorious drug dealers in the region. We’re suspecting they were killed in a gang fight over sharing profits,” he said.
The police said they were investigating the deaths but did not provide further information on the two men.
Over 720,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled a brutal military crackdown in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since August 2017 and joined some 300,000 refugees already living in squalid camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district.
Bangladeshi authorities say local kingpins use the refugees — trapped in poverty and unlikely to return home any time soon — to transport “yaba” pills which are made in Myanmar meth labs.
Yaba is a methamphetamine-based, caffeine-cut stimulant that translates as “crazy medicine.”
The coastal town on the Naf river that divides the two neighbors is a key entry point through which yaba enters the South Asian nation’s multi-million dollar drug market.
In May Bangladesh launched a violent anti-drug crackdown which saw the deaths of at least 250 drug dealers, including 26 in Teknaf in the last three months.
Experts have compared the campaign with the Filipino anti-drug war of Rodrigo Duterte, in which police say they have killed nearly 5,000 alleged users and pushers — although rights groups say the toll is at least triple that.
Two alleged Rohingya drug dealers found dead in Bangladesh
Two alleged Rohingya drug dealers found dead in Bangladesh
- The police said they were investigating the deaths
- It is suspected that they were killed in a gang fight over sharing profits
Over 1,400 Indonesians left Cambodian scam groups in five days: embassy
- Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments
- Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month
PHNOM PENH: More than 1,400 Indonesians have left cyberscam networks in Cambodia in the last five days, Jakarta said on Wednesday, after Phnom Penh pledged a fresh crackdown on the illicit trade.
Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia, some willingly and others trafficked, lure Internet users globally into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments, netting tens of billions of dollars each year.
Some foreign nationals have evacuated suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month as the government pledged to “eliminate” problems related to the online fraud industry, which the United Nations says employs at least 100,000 people in Cambodia alone.
Between January 16-20, 1,440 Indonesians left sites operated by online scam syndicates around Cambodia and went to the Indonesian embassy in Phnom Penh for help, the mission said in a statement.
The “largest wave of arrivals” occurred on Monday when 520 Indonesians came to the embassy, it said.
Recent Cambodian law enforcement measures against scam operators meant more citizens would likely continue showing up at the embassy, it added.
“The main problem for them is that they do not possess passports and they are staying in Cambodia without valid immigration permits,” according to the embassy.
It urged Indonesians leaving scam sites to report to the embassy, which could assist them with securing travel documents and overstay fine waivers in order to return home.
Indonesia said this week that its embassy in Phnom Penh handled more than 5,000 consular service cases for citizens in Cambodia last year — more than 80 percent of which were related to Indonesians who “admitted to being involved with online scam syndicates.”
Cambodia arrested and deported Chinese-born tycoon Chen Zhi, accused of running Internet scam operations from Cambodia, to China this month.
Chen, a former adviser to Cambodia’s leaders, was indicted by US authorities in October.
Analysts say Chen’s extradition has left some of those running Internet scams from Cambodia fearing legal consequences — after the criminal enterprises ballooned for years — with some operators opting to release people or evacuate their compounds.
