By Paskorn Jumlongrach
“Brothers and sisters, do you think I can get out of here?”, the question induced sudden dead air as no one could answer it. Albeit a common question raised in Line Group Chat, but for people familiar with the situation, it is not difficult for them to feel the grave terror inflicted on the woman who raised such question.
For more than three weeks, a Laotian woman and 18 other compatriots have pleaded to the Thai Prime Minister and various Thai authorities including the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Interior to coordinate a effort to rescue her as a victim of trafficking in person from an area closer to the Moei River, Myawaddy Province, Myanmar, opposite to Tak’s Phop Phra District. They wanted to flee from the criminal hub controlled by the Chinese mafia.
Apart from the 19 Laos nationals, other victims belong to at least ten other nationalities. They have approached the Civil Society Network for Victim Assistance in Human Trafficking and the Thai government for help. From having 110 people being held captive, the number has gone up to more than 300. Such a surge could be attributed to how various embassies have been receiving complaints and requests for help from their own nationals who are being held captive in criminal hubs by the Moei River. But the embassies have not enough resources to help and have approached a network of civil society to plan a rescue for these people.
The criminal hub by the Moei River in Myawaddy is subject to the influence of the Karen Border Guard Force (BGF) and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), opposite to Mae Sot and Phop Phra Districts in Tak Province. The area along the river is home to various criminal gangs. Some area is used as a stopover for the trafficking of the Rohingya while others are a drug trafficking hub. The most robust business among all is online scammers.
It could be said that the survival of these criminal hubs relies much on how Thailand serves as a corridor to support their activities. This includes the global scamming thanks to the Chinese call center scammers and holding someone for ransom. Almost 100% of the traffic of these underworld activities has gone through the Thai territory as they have to board the plane to land at the Suvannaphum Airport, except for Lao. Then, they are picked up by minivans to Mae Sot District. Some of them travelled on by boarding the plane from Don Muang or Suvannaphum Airports to Mae Sot Airport.
Such information has been gleaned from the testimonies made by the survivors with the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security (MSDHS) during the trafficking victim screening procedure as part of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). Surprisingly, such information has rarely led to the escalation of the crackdown effort, even though it clearly indicates which routes and stopovers are used to make possible such trafficking.
The criminal hub by the Moei River in Myawaddy falls under the control of two ethnic Karen armed groups. Such area is surrounded by the battlefields between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) under the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar Army with area along the Moei River and the Thai border as a buffer zone. KNU cannot interfere with this area since some of its executives reap benefits from such underworld activities as well. Most importantly, in terms of geopolitical strategy, they do not want to create too many enemies.
The Chinese mafia and leaders of DKBA and BGF have all used Thailand as a gateway to the criminal hub. It is reflected from how every flight that has landed in Mae Sot is filled substantially with Chinese young passengers who are then picked up by luxurious minivans and vanished from Mae Sot District. This is such blatant fact known among the in-charge authorities, although they have to close their eye to this. Similarly, the victims have been flown to the Mae Sot Airport and then smuggled over the border by the Chinese mafia via natural paths along the Moei River and such illegal routes have largely been made possible by “kickbacks”.
By merely installing checkpoints to inspect all foreign arrivals in Mae Sot District could already contain the problem to some extent. But despite tipoffs, there has been no response from those in charge given the influence of the Chinese mafia and thanks to their monetary power.
“If they knew I requested help from other people, they would have tortured me confining me to a dark holding cell, tying and hanging me from the ceiling, and then electrocuting me. Some have tried to escape, but were caught. An Indian person sent location to their embassy, Eventually, they ended up being put into a dark room and electrocuted and beaten up for four or five days as it pleased the torturers. I was also subject to beating when I could not achieve the target. They tasered my arms and my bottom” said the Laotian woman about the cruelty of the Chinese human trafficking rings and how they treat their victims.
This Laotian woman first came to work in Thailand. She was then persuaded by a friend to work somewhere else to earn a better income. Eventually, she was lured to work in the criminal hub by the Moei River where 18 other compatriots have also been lured from various parts of Lao. Despite her complaints to the Laotian Embassy in Myanmar, there was no response from them, except that “This area is inaccessible by the Myanmar government”. This made her almost hopeless.
Similarly, victims from Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Indonesia, and Malaysia have found no help from their respective governments. It shows the weakness of diplomatic effort. Once the governments of the host countries, namely, the Myanmar government and the Thai government, have failed to offer them help, there is nothing else they can do, except for the Chinese government.
On 29 February 2024, the Chinese government has sent planes to pick up almost one thousand Chinese survivors and Chinese mafia members who have been placed under arrest at the Mae Sot Airport District and brought them back to China. It took them three days for the operation. Albeit a secret operation, news has leaked to reporters and the operation has gone on successfully. It raised question as to why were the Chinese authorities able to enter the area controlled by the DKBA and the BGF and cracked down on the Chinese mafia? They were even permitted to use the Mae Sot Airport as a base to operate the transfer of the Chinese nationals.
It is therefore intriguing to ask “How did the Thai government feel about this?”
Nowadays, hundreds or thousands of multinational victims of the Chinese mafia networks are still held captive and tortured in the criminal hub by the Moei River. On certain days, bodies of foreign nationals are found floating in the Moei River, either getting stuck at the Thai border, or being pushed away. Despite the sending of information and locations to the leaderships in the Thai government for over three weeks, there has been no response at all, humanitarianly and morally.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.