Bangkok: More than 1,000 victims of the Crime of Trafficking in Persons (TPPO) have been rescued in a number of separate operations in Southeast Asia since last week, officials in Indonesia and the Philippines said.
The Indonesian government has succeeded in freeing 20 Indonesian citizens who were trafficked to Myanmar as part of an online scam scheme, amid increasing cases of human trafficking in Southeast Asia.
Fake recruiters have been offering high paying jobs to Indonesian citizens in Thailand. But instead, Indonesian citizens are trafficked to Myawaddy, Myanmar, to commit fraud for crypto websites or applications, said the Director for Protection of Indonesian Citizens and Indonesian Legal Entities (PWNI and BHI) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Judha Nugraha, Sunday, May 7 2023.
The Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok will cooperate with the Thai authorities to repatriate the victims to Indonesia, Judha said in a statement.
Myawaddy is in eastern Kayin state along the Thai border and is the site of armed conflict between the Myanmar military and ethnic Karen rebels.
The situation sparked a national outcry in Indonesia after a video made by one of the victims went viral on social media last month. Dozens of Indonesian workers looked somber in a dorm room, asking for help to get out of the "war zone" where they saw violence almost every day.
"Please help us return to Indonesia, because our lives here are very miserable and threatened," one of the people says in the video, explaining how they were transferred from one company to another for the last eight months before they were stranded in Myawaddy.
Victims said they were tortured when they failed to achieve certain work targets. They were often beaten, electrocuted and other forms of corporal punishment.
Quoting from the CBS News page, more than 170 victims of TIP who were rescued in the Philippines during the operation on Thursday night were from Indonesia, wrote the Philippine National Police (PNP) on Facebook.
The police, along with other government agencies, rescued a total of 1,090 victims of human trafficking in Mabalacat City, Pampanga, adding that the victims were from Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Myanmar and the Philippines.
The rescued victims in the Philippines were also forced to work for the fake cyber industry, local officials said. TIP victims were made to sacrifice their "fellow citizens," according to the police statement.
"We will continue to work closely with other agencies to ensure that those involved in these heinous crimes are held accountable," said PNP head Benjamin Acorda.
"We must all unite in the fight against human trafficking and help end this inhumane practice," he concluded. (Kevin Schreiber)
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