28-02-2025, 08:21 AM
Conditions in the overcrowded temporary camp visited by AFP in the town of Myawaddy, near the Thai border, were squalid and those held there were begging to leave.
“It’s really no good,” one 18-year-old Malaysian man told AFP, saying the toilets and showers were so dirty they were unusable.
“I hope I can contact my parents quickly so I can go.”
The “crackdown” has so far involved armed uniformed men coming to the sites and asking for volunteers to leave and go home, several freed workers told AFP in Myawaddy.
Many had their passports confiscated by scam centre bosses, and those AFP spoke to said their mobile phones were taken away.
An Indian man who said he was tricked into working in the scam centres after applying for a data entry job in Thailand, told AFP he had contacted his embassy in Bangkok several times.
He begged them “help me, help me, help me. But no one helps me,” he said.
But so far China has treated all returning detainees — 600 were sent back last week — as suspects, with state TV showing them marched off the plane in handcuffs by police on their return home.
Stretched for resources to look after the hundreds of foreigners in their charge, Naing Maung Zaw pleaded to foreign embassies to “come and take your nationals … They want to go home.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/296944...e?tbref=hp
“It’s really no good,” one 18-year-old Malaysian man told AFP, saying the toilets and showers were so dirty they were unusable.
“I hope I can contact my parents quickly so I can go.”
The “crackdown” has so far involved armed uniformed men coming to the sites and asking for volunteers to leave and go home, several freed workers told AFP in Myawaddy.
Many had their passports confiscated by scam centre bosses, and those AFP spoke to said their mobile phones were taken away.
An Indian man who said he was tricked into working in the scam centres after applying for a data entry job in Thailand, told AFP he had contacted his embassy in Bangkok several times.
He begged them “help me, help me, help me. But no one helps me,” he said.
But so far China has treated all returning detainees — 600 were sent back last week — as suspects, with state TV showing them marched off the plane in handcuffs by police on their return home.
Stretched for resources to look after the hundreds of foreigners in their charge, Naing Maung Zaw pleaded to foreign embassies to “come and take your nationals … They want to go home.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/296944...e?tbref=hp