By Shoon Naing
(Reuters) -More than 200 foreign nationals rescued from scam centres in eastern Myanmar remain stranded along the war-torn country’s border with Thailand, according to a local rebel group overseeing their repatriation.
For years criminal networks have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people to scam compounds across Southeast Asia, including many along the Thai-Myanmar border, where victims are forced to work in illegal online schemes, according to the United Nations.
Karen National Army, a rebel group that claims to have repatriated more than 8,000 foreign nationals after rescuing them from scam centres in Myanmar’s Myawaddy area in recent months, said it was currently housing 216 people, including citizens of Vietnam, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
“We are giving food and medical supplies to these people,” KNA spokesperson Naing Maung Zaw told Reuters on Tuesday.
“Some are even pregnant, and we are providing health care for them.”
Since February, Thailand has halted electricity, internet, and fuel supplies to five Myanmar border areas, including Myawaddy, in a bid to disrupt the scam centres, which have become an escalating regional security concern.
Two residents of Myawaddy, which lies across from the Thai town of Mae Sot, said that there hasn’t been any electricity supplied from Thailand for months.
Power supplied by the Myanmar government has not been stable, leaving much of the settlement – and the scam centres surrounding it – reliant on generators, they said.
Thailand’s embattled Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Monday that her administration was planning to curtail electricity supplies to illegal operations in Cambodia, following a sharp decline in relations between the neighbours.
“After we cut electricity and water to Myanmar, the number of complaints dropped significantly,” Paetongtarn told reporters.
“We’ve since learned that the criminal activity has moved from Myanmar to Cambodia.”
The Cambodian government denies the allegations.
International pressure to shut down the scam centres intensified following the abduction of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who was kidnapped after arriving in Thailand in January.
He was later rescued by Thai police, who located him across the border in Myanmar.
Criminal networks, mainly emanating from China, are known to run several of these scam centres, including those in the Myawaddy region, according to the United States Institute of Peace.
(Additional reporting by Naw Betty Han, Editing by Devjyot Ghoshal)
Comments