YANGON: Myanmar’s military said Wednesday it raided an Internet scam hub on the Thai border, arresting nearly 350 people, part of a highly publicized crackdown against the booming black market compounds.
Sprawling fraud factories have ballooned in war-torn Myanmar’s border regions, housing scammers targeting Internet users with romance and business cons worth tens of billions of dollars annually.
Myanmar’s junta has long been accused of turning a blind eye but has trumpeted a crackdown since February after being lobbied by key military backer China, experts say.
Additional raids beginning last month were part of a propaganda effort, according to some monitors, choreographed to vent pressure from Beijing without too badly denting profits that enrich the junta’s militia allies.
Myanmar’s military descended on gambling and fraud hub Shwe Kokko on Tuesday morning, according to state media The Global New Light of Myanmar.
“During the operation, 346 foreign nationals currently under scrutiny were arrested,” it said.
“Nearly ten thousand mobile phones used in online gambling operations were also seized.”
Since a 2021 coup sparked a civil war, Myanmar’s loosely governed borderlands have proven fertile ground for scam hubs which analysts say are staffed by thousands of willing workers as well as people trafficked from abroad.
But the junta’s military backer China has been increasingly irked at the number of its citizens who are both perpetrators and victims of the scams, experts say.
The junta on Wednesday blamed armed opposition groups for allowing scam centers to operate under their protection, but said it had taken action after wrestling back territorial control.
The Global New Light of Myanmar said the Yatai firm of Chinese-Cambodian alleged racketeer She Zhijiang was “the entity involved” in running the Shwe Kokko area.
She was arrested in Thailand in 2022 and extradited last week to China where he faces allegations of involvement in online gambling and fraud operations.
She and his company Yatai were previously under British and US sanctions.
Washington says he transformed a village on the Myanmar-Thai border into Shwe Kokko — “a resort city custom built for gambling, drug trafficking, prostitution, and scams targeting people around the world.”
In October, Myanmar’s junta announced raids on nearby scam center KK Park, where it says it is currently demolishing more than 600 buildings.
A highly publicized sweep starting in February saw around 7,000 alleged scammers repatriated and Thailand enact a cross-border Internet blockade.
Scam victims in Southeast and East Asia alone were conned out of up to $37 billion in 2023, according to a UN report, which said global losses were likely “much larger.”
Myanmar junta says raided online scam center, arrested over 300
https://arab.news/mpppk
Myanmar junta says raided online scam center, arrested over 300
- The junta on Wednesday blamed armed opposition groups for allowing scam centers to operate under their protection, but said it had taken action after wrestling back territorial control
UK interior minister insists asylum reforms ‘fair’ amid blowback
- Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders
- Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow”
LONDON: Britain’s interior minister doubled down Thursday on her tough stance on immigration despite criticism from charities and unease within the ruling Labour party that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Shabana Mahmood announced that asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments.
The policy forms part of a major overhaul of migration rules announced late last year and modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system that aims to slash irregular migration to the UK.
Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum was “firm but fair,” adding she would open new and safe legal routes.
But Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow” that “risks forcing people into destitution, homelessness and exploitation while they wait for their claims to be decided.”
Mahmood’s reforms are widely seen as an attempt to stem support for the hard-right Reform UK party, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.
It has topped opinion polls for a year, in part because of the government’s failure to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats.
But her stance has also been credited with contributing to Labour losing support to the progressive Green party, which won a local election in a traditional Labour heartland last week.
Mahmood said there was a middle path between Farage’s “nightmare pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the world” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s “fairy tale of open borders.”
Her reform that makes refugee status temporary, including for accompanied children, came into force this week.
The status will be reviewed every 30 months, with refugees forced to return to their home countries once those are deemed safe.
They will also need to wait for 20 years, instead of the current five, before they can apply for permanent residency.
She also announced earlier this week that the government would stop issuing education visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
It said there had been a surge in asylum applications by students from those countries and almost 135,000 asylum seekers in total had entered the UK using legal routes since 2021.
