2023-09-03 19:40:44
Victims of online scams are more diverse than you might think. The most obvious are of course the defrauded people: they have lost their savings or even gone into debt after being the target of a cryptocurrency fraud or even an imaginary virtual lover.
But the hundreds of thousands of “small hands” forced to work behind the scenes in these scams are also victims. Trapped by criminal networks, they are victims of human trafficking and multiple other human rights violations (arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, etc.), while being prosecuted and punished rather than protected.
Change of look
It is therefore to a real change of outlook that reading invites of a report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published on Tuesday August 29, which focuses on the situation in Southeast Asia. This region of the world, whose technological development has exploded in recent years, has seen an increase in online scam centers since the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of many casinos. Very lucrative, these centers generate several billion dollars in revenue per year.
In Burma, around 120,000 people are forcibly recruited there, and around 100,000 in Cambodia, according to sources deemed “credible” by the UN agency. Laos, the Philippines and even Thailand are also concerned. But the extent of this network is “difficult to estimate” due to its clandestine nature and gaps in the authorities’ response.
Electric shocks and sexual violence
This trafficking in human beings mainly concerns men, adults, from all over Asia but also from Turkey, Egypt, Kenya or even Brazil. Many are migrants, polyglots, with a good level of education and a mastery of computer tools. Attracted by fake job offers on the Internet, which often promise them good salaries and a work visa, they have their passports and telephones confiscated as soon as they arrive in the country concerned.
The working conditions described by the report are frightening: the minimum of food and water, a lack of medical care sometimes resulting in death, physical violence (beatings, electric shocks), psychological (humiliation, solitary confinement) and sexual. Gang rapes can act as a “punishment” when the person has failed to achieve their online scam objectives.
In some cases, victims are sold to other traffickers, including through apps like Telegram. In others, a ransom is demanded from their families in exchange for their release. Escape attempts come to light anyway ” often ” fruitless, says the report: they end either in death or in cruel punishments.
Inadequate responses
These criminal activities are all the more difficult to counter as they proliferate in countries plagued by conflict or a breakdown of the rule of law, such as Burma. Border areas, which are poorly regulated, are particularly affected. “The ability of traffickers to move their operations – and often their victims – from one country to another in the region demonstrates that ASEAN countries (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Ed.) need to adopt a regional approach to tackle this problem”says the report.
Finally, the UN agency insists on the inadequacy of the legal response: many of the people recruited by force were subsequently prosecuted for offenses related to illegal immigration or the scams they practiced. “It is not enough to have laws or agreements on trafficking in persons, they must also be applied fairly to all forms of trafficking writes the OHCHR, regretting that the “forced criminality” (in this case, the production of online scams) has often been excluded so far.
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