Eighty-Four Indonesian workers from Myanmar Scam Centers have now returned home. The group, which included three pregnant women, were in “good condition and healthy” after their evacuation from Myanmar. Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. After working under pressure at scam centers in eastern Myanmar, they arrived from Thailand, at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Indonesia.
Eighty-four Indonesians returned home overnight on two flights from Thailand, Indonesian officials said on Saturday (Mar 1). It is the latest group of alleged scam workers to be repatriated from the region. The 69 Indonesian men and 15 women landed in Jakarta after negotiations between Indonesian officials and their Thai and Myanmar counterparts.
Thousands of Indonesians have been enticed abroad in recent years to other Southeast Asian countries for better-paying jobs, only to end up in the hands of transnational scam operators. Cyberscam operations, which have thrived in Myanmar’s lawless border areas for several years, lure foreign workers with promises of high-paying jobs but hold them hostage and force them into committing online fraud.
Pressure from Beijing?
Under pressure from key ally Beijing, Myanmar has cracked down on some of the compounds, freeing around 7,000 workers from more than two dozen countries. The 69 Indonesian men and 15 women landed in Jakarta after negotiations between Indonesian officials and their Thai and Myanmar counterparts, Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affair’s citizen protection Director Judha Nugraha told on Saturday.
“They will be brought to the Social Affairs Ministry’s safehouse and trauma center. They will undergo a rehabilitation process,” he said. Ministry spokesperson Rolliansyah Soemirat also confirmed their return.
They arrived in Jakarta on two AirAsia flights – one late Friday and one early Saturday. The ministry said it had repatriated an early group of 46 Indonesians in February, bringing the total repatriated since last month to 140.
‘Escaping hell’: Myanmar scam center workers plead to go home. Indonesian forced to work in Cambodian online gambling ring recalls horror ordeal being amid ‘Armed men and sniffer dogs’.
Thousands of Indonesians have been enticed abroad in recent years to other Southeast Asian countries for better-paying jobs, only to end up in the hands of transnational scam operators.
Between 2020 and September last year, Jakarta repatriated more than 4,700 Indonesians entangled in online scam operations from countries including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, according to foreign ministry data.
But many of them are now still stranded in Myanmar in makeshift camps because the process of assessing them and arranging flights back to their own countries is so slow.
The armed militia groups who are holding them have a very limited capacity to support so many people – more than 7,000. One of them has said they have stopped freeing people from the compounds because they are not being moved to Thailand fast enough.
The conditions in the camps are unsanitary, food barely sufficient, and many of the freed workers are in poor health. Suffering from panic attacks, after working in scam centers where they are routinely beaten. They get two very basic meals a day, there are only two toilets for 450 people.
One of them described being invited a year ago to take up what he was promised would be a good job, in Thailand, requiring only good English language and typing skills. Instead, he found himself subjected to a brutal regime, forced to work long hours every day to meet the target for defrauding people online set by his Chinese bosses.
Despite horrifying accounts of abuse from those who escaped in the past, thousands still come from parts of the world where good jobs are scarce, enticed by promises of good money.
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Commencing teaching in his early twenties, Prof Aggarwal has diverse experience of great tenure in the top institutions not only as an educationist, administrator, editor, author but also promoting youth and its achievements through the nicest possible content framing. A revolutionary to the core, he is also keen to address the society around him for its betterment and growth on positive notes while imbibing the true team spirit the work force along with.
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