“We are Cameroonian, Nigerian, Kenyan . . . Ethiopian.”
Speaking from a dormitory-style building, the scam center worker pleaded for help, saying foreign citizens were “trapped” in a compound in Myanmar, “beaten,” and forced to work without pay. “There are many other Africans out there,” claimed the employee in a blurred video obtained by a Chiang Mai-based organization that combats human trafficking.
Educated youth from Africa are a significant presence in the cybercrime sweatshops along the Thailand-Myanmar border. Ethiopia is the primary recruiting hub on the continent, supplying the fourth-largest pool of tech workers after China, Vietnam, and India.
In February, Thailand cut electricity and gas supplies to five border towns in Myanmar. The power shutdown took place shortly after the high-profile abduction of a Chinese actor by a crime syndicate. Scores of foreign citizens housed in scam compounds along the Moei River were abruptly released. Of the first batch of 260 tech workers who crossed over to the Thai side by raft, over half were from Ethiopia.
An Addis Ababa newspaper ran a piece last December on the plight of nearly 3,000 citizens held in scam factories across Asia. Citing data from the Ethiopian Statistical Service, the report pointed out that high unemployment was driving educated youth towards “dangerous migration paths.”
Shikur Naser, a civil engineer from Tora in Central Ethiopia, told Addis Fortune he learned about a promising online job opportunity in Thailand through a college friend. The salary of around $1000 per month was 17 times higher than his pay as a mathematics teacher at a secondary school.
To secure the offer, Shikur was instructed to purchase a plane ticket and send a cryptocurrency payment to the student who made the introduction. “I thought I would be working as a digital marketer,” said the 25-year-old engineer, who discovered upon arrival in Bangkok that his new office building was a crime compound across the border.
Shikur claimed he was tortured for failing to meet scam targets and abducted by gunmen at Bangkok airport when he tried to return home. He eventually made it back to Ethiopia after his family raised $2,500 for his release.
An IT professional nicknamed Billy shared a similar story of forced labor and torture. The automation engineer from Hawassa told the Wall Street Journal he was recruited by Huilong Network, a marketing firm in Thailand. The interview was conducted in English and Mandarin, and the firm offered him a seven-month contract. But a few days after he landed in Bangkok, Billy realized he had been duped.
“It was like a scary movie,” said the 41-year-old, recalling the trip across the border. Billy ended up at Mountain View, a scam den in Myanmar, and was forced to work on a romance investment scheme called “pig butchering.” Posing as “Alicia,” he established a rapport with “targets,” typically men from the Middle East and South Asia, in order to lure them into fraudulent investment schemes.
Billy claimed he was handcuffed and subjected to physical abuse for joining a strike with other workers in his dormitory. He estimated that roughly one-third of the workforce at Mountain View were from Ethiopia.
One Ethiopian worker spoke to a South China Morning Post video crew soon after his release in late February. Pointing to scars on his back, Yotor claimed he received electric shocks as “punishment” on a daily basis.
Kannavee Suebsang, a member of parliament in Thailand told a reporter in February, “There are still a lot of people left in the scam centers . . . victims of human trafficking who have been tormented and electrocuted. . . 100 Ethiopian people. . . haven’t been rescued.”
The Ethiopian government issued an alert last August warning citizens about illegal recruiting practices by brokers representing firms in Southeast Asia. An official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that attempts to trace or assist trafficked workers through regular diplomatic channels were proving to be difficult since the scam compounds were located in areas where “the Myanmar government claims to have no authority.”
Although Ethiopia’s foreign ministry was aware that citizens were trapped in the scam compounds, they were caught off guard by the recent exodus of trafficked workers into Thailand. Ethiopia does not have an embassy in Bangkok and the consular office was ill-equipped to handle a mass repatriation. A released Ethiopian scammer stranded in a makeshift camp in Myanmar told a BBC News correspondent: “I just want to go back to my country.”
On Monday, the Ethiopian government announced that 130 nationals had been repatriated in a two-part “citizen-oriented” rescue mission coordinated by the embassy in Delhi.
