YANGON: SpaceX has cut service to more than 2,500 Starlink devices at Myanmar scam centers, a company executive said Wednesday, after reports revealed that their use had exploded in the illicit industry.
Sprawling compounds where Internet tricksters target foreigners with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely-governed border during its civil war, sparked by a 2021 coup.
A highly-publicized crackdown starting in February saw some 7,000 workers repatriated and Thailand enact a cross-border Internet blockade.
But an AFP investigation this month revealed construction has continued apace, while Starlink receivers have been installed en masse, seeming to connect the hubs to the Elon Musk-owned satellite network.
SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink business operations, Lauren Dreyer, said the company “disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers’” in Myanmar.
Her post on X did not outline when the terminals were disconnected.
Myanmar’s military announced this week it had raided KK Park — one of the country’s most notorious scam centers — and seized 30 Starlink satellite Internet terminals.
Those are only a tiny fraction of the number used at the site, according to AFP’s investigation as well as independent analysis.
An AFP journalist on Wednesday saw more than 1,000 people traveling away from the site on foot, by motorbike and crammed into pickup trucks.
One departing KK Park worker said the crackdown was ongoing.
“Around 10:00 a.m. Myanmar military soldiers in four trucks arrived to our site,” said one worker who declined to give his name for security reasons.
The scam centers have emerged as a key plank in the wartime economy of Myanmar, where the military has been fighting an array of rebel groups since seizing power.
Frustrated that Chinese citizens were ring-leading scams, being trafficked into the hubs and defrauded by them, Beijing in February led the pressure campaign to curb the booming black market.
The junta relies on military backing from China to maintain its grip on power.
But it also relies on powerful militias controlling the border regions on their behalf, in return for profiting from the scam centers, analysts say.
“They need to be able to enrich those militias,” said Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “But then they also have the pressure from China.”
The result is a “balancing act,” he said, with the junta “tokenistically” taking action “while actually not doing anything.”
SpaceX says ‘disabled’ 2,500 Starlink devices at Myanmar scam centers
https://arab.news/yppp9
SpaceX says ‘disabled’ 2,500 Starlink devices at Myanmar scam centers
- Sprawling compounds where Internet tricksters target foreigners with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely-governed border
- Myanmar’s military announced this week it had raided KK Park and seized 30 Starlink satellite Internet terminals
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
