Myanmar’s Cyber-Slavery Compounds Linked to 100,000 Trafficked Individuals
Five years ago, the site of what is now a vast, heavily guarded complex stretching for 210 hectares (520 acres) was merely ‘little more than empty fields,’ according to a recent report by the Guardian. Today, it stands as the frontline of a multibillion-dollar criminal fraud industry, fueled by human trafficking and brutal violence. The expansion of these ‘cyber-slavery compounds’ underscores a growing crisis of exploitation and organized crime in the region.
Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos have become havens for transnational crime syndicates operating scam centers such as KK Park, which deploy enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits. Despite some attempts by authorities to crack down on these centers and rescue the workers, who can be subjected to torture and trapped inside, recent drone images and new research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveal that the number of such centers operating along the Thai-Myanmar border has more than doubled since Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021. Construction continues to this day, indicating a sustained and expanding criminal enterprise.
Data from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a defense thinktank in Canberra, shows the number of Myanmar scam centers on the Thai border has increased from 11 to 27, with an average expansion of 5.5 hectares per month. Drone images and photographs of KK Park and other Myanmar scam centers, Tai Chang, and Shwe Kokko, taken by the Guardian in August, reveal new features and active building work. Myanmar’s military junta has allowed the spread of scam centers inside the country as these criminal enterprises have become an essential part of the country’s conflict economy since the coup. The military, which has lost significant territory and is struggling to retain its grip on power, cannot take meaningful measures without endangering its precarious relations with the crucial armed militias who are profiting from these operations.
Earlier this year, 7,000 people were freed from the compounds, but Thai police estimate that as many as 100,000 people were held inside Myanmar scam centers. The Guardian reports that these centers are run by Chinese criminal gangs, and describes how individuals who unknowingly come to Thailand for customer service jobs are trafficked to Myanmar’s guarded ‘cyberslavery compounds.’ These victims are forced to send thousands of messages from fake social-media profiles, posing as rich American investors to swindle US real estate agents into cryptocurrency scams.
Since 2020, Southeast Asia’s cyber-slavery industry has entrapped hundreds of thousands of people, forcing them to perform ‘pig butchering,’ the brutal term for building trust with a fraud target before scamming them. Initially targeting Chinese and Taiwanese individuals, the industry has shifted to Southeast Asians, Indians, and now Africans. Criminal syndicates have increasingly focused on scamming victims in the US and Europe after Chinese efforts to prevent its citizens from being targeted, according to experts. This trend has led some trafficking networks to seek recruits with English-language and tech skills, including East Africans, who are now estimated to be trapped inside Southeast Asian compounds, as noted by Benedikt Hofmann, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
The proliferation of these cyber-slavery compounds highlights the urgent need for international cooperation and action to combat transnational organized crime and protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation. As the situation worsens, the human cost of these operations continues to rise, underscoring the gravity of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the region.