YANGON: Myanmar’s military said Sunday it arrested nearly 1,600 foreign nationals in five days in a highly publicized crackdown on a notorious Internet scam hub on the Thai border.
Sprawling fraud factories have mushroomed in war-torn Myanmar’s border regions, housing scammers who target Internet users with romance and business cons worth tens of billions of dollars annually.
Myanmar’s junta has long been accused of looking the other way as the illicit industry grows, 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 smokescreen, according to some monitors, choreographed to vent pressure from Beijing without too badly denting profits that enrich the junta’s militia allies.
In its latest publicized tally, the junta said “1,590 foreign nationals who entered Myanmar illegally were arrested” from November 18 to 22 in raids on gambling and fraud hub Shwe Kokko, according to state media The Global New Light of Myanmar.
“Moreover, authorities seized 2,893 computers, 21,750 mobile phones, 101 Starlink satellite receivers, 21 Routers and a large number of industrial materials used in the online fraud and gambling activities,” the newspaper said.
After an AFP investigation last month revealed receivers from the Starlink satellite Internet service had been installed en masse at scam compounds, the Elon Musk-owned company said it had disabled more than 2,500 Starlink devices in the vicinity of suspected Myanmar scam centers.
The Global New Light of Myanmar said 223 people accused of perpetrating online fraud and gambling at Shwe Kokko were detained on Saturday alone, including 100 Chinese nationals.
Video published by local media showed a steamroller crushing hundreds of computer monitors lined up in rows next to piles of already smashed mobile phones at the Shwe Kokko compound on Saturday.
Scam hubs, staffed by thousands of willing workers as well as people trafficked from abroad, have proliferated in Myanmar’s loosely governed borderlands since a 2021 coup sparked a civil war in the country.
While China is a key military backer of the junta, analysts say Beijing is increasingly irate at the rampant scams targeting and enlisting its citizens.
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 nearly 1,600 foreigners arrested in scam hub raids
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Myanmar junta says nearly 1,600 foreigners arrested in scam hub raids
- Sprawling fraud factories have mushroomed in war-torn Myanmar’s border regions
- Myanmar’s junta has long been accused of looking the other way as the illicit industry grew
Sri Lanka hospital releases 22 rescued Iranian sailors
- Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka discharged from hospital 22 Iranian sailors who were plucked from life rafts after their warship was sunk by a US submarine, officials said Sunday.
The sailors were treated at Karapitiya Hospital in the southern port city of Galle since Wednesday after the IRIS Dena was torpedoed just outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.
“Another 10 are still undergoing treatment,” a medical officer at the hospital told AFP.
He said the bodies of 84 Iranians retrieved from the Indian Ocean were also at the hospital.
Those discharged from hospital overnight had been taken to a beach resort in the same district.
Sri Lankan authorities said the survivors from the Dena were being handled according to international humanitarian law, and the government had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross for assistance.
The island is also providing safe haven for another 219 Iranian sailors from a second ship, the IRIS Bushehr, that was allowed to berth a day after the Dena was sunk.
Sailors from the Bushehr have been moved to a Sri Lanka Navy camp at Welisara, just north of the capital Colombo, and their ship taken over by Sri Lanka’s navy.
Sri Lanka announced it was taking the Bushehr to the north-eastern port of Trincomalee, but an engine failure and other technical and administrative issues had delayed the movement, a navy spokesman said.
Sri Lanka has denied claims that it was under pressure from Washington not to allow the Iranians to return home, and said Colombo will be guided solely by international law and its own domestic legislation.
A US State Department spokesperson said the disposition of the Bushehr crew and Iranian sailors rescued at sea was up to Sri Lanka.
“The United States, of course, respects and recognizes Sri Lanka’s sovereignty in the handling of this situation,” the spokesperson told AFP in Washington.
India, meanwhile, said Saturday that it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on “humane” grounds after it too reported engine problems.
The three ships were part of a multi-national fleet review held by India before the war in the Middle East started last week.
“I think it was the humane thing to do, and I think we were guided by that principle,” Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday.
The Lavan docked in the south-west Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday.
“A lot of the people on board were young cadets. They have disembarked and are in a nearby facility,” Jaishankar said.
