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Exclusive: World’s ‘largest online black market’ loses banking license
Huione Pay, the banking arm of what’s been called the world’s “largest ever illicit online marketplace,” has been stripped of its banking license, the National Bank of Cambodia confirmed to RFA this week. The company is part of the wider Huione Group of Cambodia, a conglomerate which operates several “Huione” products, including marketplaces, banking and finance apps. One of these, a Telegram marketplace, has been identified as a notorious place for crime tied to up to $24 billion in illicit transactions. Huione Pay’s license was withdrawn owing to its noncompliance with “existing regulations and recommendations that may have been made by the regulators,” a National Bank of Cambodia spokesperson told RFA by email on Thursday. The spokesperson did not say when the license was withdrawn or what repercussions the company might face if they continue to operate. Huione did not respond to RFA’s requests for comment before publication. It has previously denied criminal activity– when Huione was identified by the cryptocurrency compliance firm Elliptic to have facilitated millions of dollars in criminal payments, it issued a statement insisting that it was a mere “information publishing and guarantee trading platform” bearing no responsibility for the goods and services others used it to trade. RELATED STORIES World’s ‘largest illicit online marketplace’ is just a download away Report: Online cybercriminal marketplace is part of Cambodian conglomerate Hun To went after the press; who really won? A March 6, 2025 post to the official Telegram channel of Huione Pay offering loans to customers in both dollars and cryptocurrencies.(RFA) However, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, Huione’s Telegram marketplace has become one of the main arteries of illicit commerce in Southeast Asia, a region grappling with an epidemic of human trafficking and internet fraud. The UNODC’s regional representative, Benedikt Hofmann, welcomed the termination of Huione Pay’s license. The withdrawal “will send an important signal, especially given the high profile of Huione and its outsize role for the region’s criminal ecosystem,” he told RFA. Hofmann cautioned, however, that this latest development would not be a cure-all for the region’s crime epidemic – nor would it necessarily mean the end of Huione. “Huione is in many ways the tip of the iceberg and we will see users shifting to other, similar providers which have emerged in the region,” he added. Much of the money that was being moved through Huione Pay came from illicit activities linked to cyberscamming, the UNODC found. For more than half a decade the region in which Huione operates has been dotted with compounds housing what the U.N. says are hundreds of thousands of enslaved workers forced to perpetrate a type of cyberscam commonly known as “pig butchering”. The practice is estimated to swindle billions of dollars from its victims around the world every year. Elliptic, the cryptocurrency compliance firm, traced billions of dollars flowing from Huione Guarantee, the Telegram marketplace, to Huione Pay. This was “likely so that these criminally-derived funds could be cashed out,” firm founder Tom Robinson told RFA. “I think this will be a blow to Huione Guarantee,” Robinson added. “We have direct evidence of Huione Pay laundering money from scam victims around the world, including the elderly and vulnerable. They are willing facilitators of pig butchering and other fraud, so any regulatory action against them should be welcomed.” The loss of Huione Pay’s license, which has not been previously reported, does not seem to have curtailed the company’s activities, however. As recently as Thursday the company’s official Telegram channel, linked to on its website, was offering loans to customers. A post on February 27th promoted the launch of a Huione-branded Visa card. Visa did not respond to requests for comment by press time. News of Huione Pay’s license being withdrawn was greeted as overdue by a former employee who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal. They told RFA it was openly acknowledged within the company that there were two sets of accounts maintained. “They cook the books,” the former employee said. While the company handled billions of dollars, “close to none” of those transactions were made available to the compliance department, which was relegated to the role of advisors, “ whose advice were never taken seriously,” the former employee said. One of Huione Pay’s three directors is Hun To, a cousin of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet. Official censure of a company so close to the inner circle of Cambodia’s ruling family is unusual. But Jacob Sims, an expert on transnational crime at the United States Institute of Peace, told RFA that the withdrawal of Huione’s banking license should not be read as a herald of reform. “It all ultimately amounts to a brand switch,” Sims said. “It’s basically an easy thing for the regime to point to and say, ‘Look, we’re cracking down on this’ without doing really anything but consolidating Huione’s available brands.” For Sims, there’s one way the Cambodian government could show it was serious about cracking down on the crime wave Huione has been surfing: “Arrest all the people involved in Huione.” Edited by Abby Seiff and Boer Deng We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
China said we’re ready to fight till the end, If war is what the U.S. wants!!
China accuses US of using fentanyl as a pretext for tariffs, escalating tensions. They have said they will fight till the end against USA.
Tougher times for Myanmar’s political prisoners, a parent and rights group say
Read RFA coverage of this story in Burmese. Military authorities in Myanmar have imposed harsher conditions and punishments on political prisoners, restricting their access to parcels, books and medicine and beating those who complain, a rights group and a family member said. The military has struggled to suppress a groundswell of public defiance, as well as a growing insurgency, since it overthrew an elected government in 2021 and more than 6,000 people have been killed and nearly 29,000 have been arrested for their opposition, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP said. Many of those detained have been young people, infuriated by the 2021 ouster of a civilian government after a decade of tentative reform raised hopes for change in a country that had seen largely unbroken military rule since 1962. The AAPP, in a statement on Monday, said conditions for political prisoners across the country were getting worse, with more restrictions on what they could get from outside. A parent of a political prisoner being held in the Thayarwady Prison in the central Bago region, agreed, saying supplies to inmates were not getting through. “I sent some medicine because they were sick, and although it was accepted by the mail department, it didn’t reach the children,” said the parent who declined to be identified for safety reasons. The Thayarwady Prison is notorious for being cramped and crumbling. “In the rainy season, there’s rain, and in the hot season bits fall from the ceiling all the time, like rain,” said the parent. “I ask them about it but they won’t do anything about it,” said the parent, referring to prison authorities. The AAPP, which monitors human rights conditions in Myanmar from the border with Thailand, also said prison authorities were putting restrictions on deliveries of packages and books, and some prisons had banned visits altogether. Political prisoners also complained of inadequate medical care and torture, the group said. RELATED STORIES Myanmar junta frees nearly 1,000 Rohingya from prison, group says Myanmar junta says it releases 600 political prisoners in mass amnesty Thousands freed from Myanmar scam centers are stranded due to official inaction In Yangon’s infamous Insein Prison, trade union leader Thet Hnin Aung, photojournalist Sai Zaw Thike, and another man named Naing Win were beaten after speaking to representatives of Myanmar’s Human Rights Commission about prison conditions during a visit. “Three political inmates … were taken to the prison’s interrogation center, where they were tortured and beaten before being placed in solitary confinement,” the group said in a statement published on Monday. RFA could not reach the office of deputy director-general of the Prisons Department for comment. The AAPP also said that three prisoners died due to lack of medical care in February after being detained by junta authorities in prisons and police stations. Myanmar’s junta has faced accusations from human rights groups of not providing adequate medical care for prisoners, and of often releasing sick prisoners days before they die. In 2024, 31 political prisoners died in custody, among them two members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy administration that was overthrown in 2021, the former chief minister of Mandalay region, Zaw Myint Maung, and minister of electricity and energy Win Khaing. Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
INTERVIEW: ‘North Korea could have 300 nuclear warheads within 10 years’
Ankit Panda, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was interviewed by Radio Free Asia regarding Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and how its capabilities might be improved through North Korea’s support of Russia in its war with Ukraine. Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, also said that North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, very likely can be used to attack an American city, and that Pyongyang might have as many as 300 warheads within the next 10 years. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. RFA: If North Korea were to launch an ICBM at the U.S. right now, do you think the U.S. would be vulnerable? Ankit Panda: That’s a good question. First of all, would North Korea launch an ICBM? Probably not — it would be essentially suicidal. There’s no reason for North Korea to attack the United States unprovoked. But the technical question that you asked, “Can North Korea essentially detonate a nuclear warhead over an American city?” — the answer to that question in my view is very probably yes, and that’s a carefully chosen phrase, “very probably yes.” The North Koreans, the reliability that they have is probably a lot lower than what the United States has, but it’s probably sufficient for the purposes that Kim Jong Un seeks which is to deter the United States. The only question that Kim has to ask himself is, “In a serious crisis or a war between the United States and North Korea, would an American president be worried that if the war got out of control, American cities could be vulnerable to nuclear attack?” And I think the answer there is absolutely. RFA: But can’t the United States intercept North Korean ICBMs with its missile defense system? Panda: The U.S. has a very limited homeland missile defense capability. We have a total of 44 interceptors that are capable of destroying incoming ICBMs. These interceptors are actually deployed in Alaska. There’s 40 of them in Alaska and four of them in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. These are designed to deal with North Korean ICBM threats. But it gets a little complicated here because it’s not that there’s 44 interceptors, which means the U.S. can defend against 44 North Korean ICBMs. Probably the U.S. would look to use 3 to 4 interceptors against one incoming ICBM reentry vehicle. And so then if you’re in North Korea, you have a solution to this problem, right? You build more ICBMs. And so that is where the North Koreans have gone. I would argue that that is a chance that would be very difficult for an American president to take — this idea that the North Koreans could launch ICBMs and our interceptors might not actually work. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Workers’ Party General Secretary Kim Jong-un after signing the ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement’ at the Kumsusan State Guest House in Pyongyang in June 2024.(Yonhap News) So we know from Ukrainian intelligence that there has been change in the KN-23s. … They used to be very inaccurate when they were first used. And it turns out there was a report in December 2024 that the precision has improved significantly, and that is a very, very important milestone for the North Koreans because — especially if they do want to deploy tactical nuclear weapons — precision of the missile system matters quite a bit because the yield of the weapon is a lot lower, the yield being the explosive power. And so if you’re trying to leverage those types of tactical nuclear weapons for maximal military utility–let’s say you want to hit an airfield in South Korea that has F-35s that you can’t deal with once they take off, so you have to destroy them before they take off. You really need to make sure that the the yield of the weapon and the precision of the missile match essentially in terms of the mission that you’re trying to accomplish. And so I really think that we shouldn’t underrate the ways in which North Korea’s missile transfers to Russia are very directly augmenting Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions and strategy. RFA: When we talk about North Korean involvement in Ukraine, experts and officials say that North Korea is getting from Russia food or other kinds of support, but regarding missile technology, what does Pyongyang need that Moscow can give? Panda: The area where I think the Russians can really help them is with guidance computers, cruise missile maneuvering, cruise missile control and potentially even countermeasures, other types of ways in which to just improve the reliability of North Korea’s manufacturing standards for missile systems. So all of that, I think will will happen is probably happening in some form space launch technologies, too. I think the Russians will be very, very eager to to help the North Koreans out. That has been the most public facing component of technical cooperation. RFA: As North Korea and Russia grow closer, is there a possibility that Russia will recognize North Korea as an official nuclear state? Panda: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has pretty explicitly said that Russia no longer views North Korea as a nonproliferation concern. Essentially, you know, since the early 1990s, the major powers China, Russia, the United States and Japan, South Korea, the European Union, the whole world has seen North Korea as a nonproliferation problem. They’re the only country to have signed the Nonproliferation Treaty, left that treaty and built nuclear weapons. So it matters how you deal with North Korea for that reason. But it also matters in a big way that the North Koreans are really presenting unacceptable nuclear risks, in my opinion, to the United States and its allies, and so that demands a focus on risk reduction. President Donald Trump and North Korean General Secretary Kim Jong Un meet in Singapore on June 12, 2018.(Yonhap News)…
Taiwan detains China-linked cargo ship over severed undersea cable
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan’s coastguard detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew after an undersea cable in the Taiwan Strait was damaged on Tuesday, saying it cannot rule out the possibility it was a deliberate “gray zone” act. Gray zone activities are covert, ambiguous, and low-intensity tactics used to achieve strategic goals without provoking open warfare, something Taiwan has frequently said China was employing around the self-ruled island. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration, or CGA, said that it received a report about the damaged cable from its telecommunication service on Tuesday morning and dispatched personnel to detain the Chinese-crewed Hong Tai 58, registered in Togo, which dropped anchor near the cable off the southwestern coast of Taiwan around the time it was disconnected. “The suspected Togo-flagged cargo ship, Hong Tai, was found to be a Chinese-invested convenience-flag vessel with all eight crew members being Chinese nationals,” said CGA. The Hong Tai remained stationary near the damaged Taiwan-Penghu No.3 submarine cable from Saturday to Tuesday, prompting Taiwan’s coast guard to monitor and attempt radio contact, which went unanswered, according to CGA. The vessel was later escorted to Anping Port, though initial boarding efforts failed due to rough seas, the coastguard said, adding that the case was being treated as a national security matter. “Authorities are not ruling out the possibility of a Chinese gray-zone operation,” the agency said. Lin Jian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, told a briefing on Tuesday that he was not aware of the situation, though adding that it was not a “diplomatic issue.” He did not elaborate. Taiwan has reported five cases of sea cable malfunctions this year, compared with three each in 2024 and 2023. In 2023, for instance, two undersea cables connecting the Matsu islands were cut, disconnecting the internet. At that time, Taiwan authorities said that two Chinese vessels caused the disruption, but that there was no evidence Beijing deliberately tampered with the cables. RELATED STORIES Taiwan severs academic ties with Chinese universities, citing propaganda links China condemns US for tweak to Taiwan reference; Washington calls it ‘routine’ update Taiwanese army officer’s failed defection to China ends in 13-year sentence Taiwan has repeatedly accused China of employing gray zone tactics to destabilize the region without direct military conflict, citing Chinese military incursions, cyberattacks, economic coercion, election interference and undersea cable damage. Beijing regards Taiwan as its territory while the democratic island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from mainland China in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War. Taipei has condemned Beijing’s trade restrictions on the island’s exports and suspected disinformation campaigns ahead of elections, warning of growing threats to regional security. China, however, denies these accusations, asserting that its military activities are routine operations and that economic measures are based on regulatory concerns. Beijing insists Taiwan is a domestic issue and warns against foreign interference, maintaining that its actions are lawful and necessary to safeguard national sovereignty. Edited by Taejun Kang. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
Over 2 dozen teachers at Aksu school sentenced to prison in Xinjiang
Read RFA coverage of this story in Uyghur. More than two dozen Uyghur teachers at a college in Xinjiang were arrested by Chinese authorities in 2017 and are currently still serving jail sentences, Radio Free Asia was able to confirm with officials at the school. Their arrests eight years ago occurred at a time when authorities in the northwestern region began rounding up Uyghur intellectuals, educators, businesspeople and cultural figures en masse and incarcerating them in re-education camps to prevent what China said was terrorism and religious extremism. Last week, RFA Uyghur reported that prominent historian Ghojaniyaz Yollugh Tekin, 59, who taught the Aksu Education Institute in the city of Aksu, had been arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 17 years in prison in late 2018 for his research, writings and views that Uyghurs are part of the Turkic world — and not Chinese. Upon further investigation, RFA learned that authorities also arrested and detained 25 other educators from the same school in 2017. But RFA could not determine the reasons for their arrests or the lengths of their sentences. Established in 1985, the college currently has about 220 staff members — more than half of whom are Uyghurs — and 3,000 students. During the early 2000s, there were 100-150 Uyghur teachers, according to Uyghur activist Tuyghun Abduweli, who hails from Aksu but now lives in Canada. A Chinese national flag flies over a vehicle entrance to the inmate detention area at the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng, western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Apr. 23, 2021.(Mark Schiefelbein/AP) A person who works at the institute but who requested anonymity for safety reasons, said more than 20 teachers from the school were taken away in several groups in 2017. Their cases were filed by Aksu prefecture security agents, and the institute’s political affairs department and police station collaborated with them during the arrests and interrogations, the person said. Held in a Bingtuan prison A police officer who works at the institute told RFA that 26 teachers — mostly men — were arrested and are serving jail sentences. He said he was involved in the cases of three of the teachers arrested — Mutellip Mamut, Eli Qasim and Eziz Memet, the last of whom was about 47 years old at the time. Another police officer named two other imprisoned teachers — Abdusalam Eziz and Abdurahman Rozi — and said he assisted in their arrests as well as the arrest of Mutellip Mamut. Those arrested were initially taken to Aksu Prison, but were later transferred to a detention center run by the Bingtuan at its headquarters in Shihezi in northern Xinjiang, the police officer said. The Bingtuan is a state-run economic and paramilitary organization of mostly Han Chinese who develop land, secure borders and maintain stability in Xinjiang. RELATED STORIES Prominent Uyghur historian sentenced to 17 years in prison Uyghur lecturer said to be detained for not signing allegiance oath to CCP Uyghur literature professor confirmed detained in Xinjiang Uyghur linguistics professor serving 15-year sentence in Xinjiang New details emerge about Uyghur college teacher sentenced in China’s Xinjiang “Mutellip Mamut is currently at the Shihezi prison,” the police officer told RFA. Authorities held secret trials for the teachers, and institute leaders and staffers who collaborated on the cases were not allowed to attend, he added. Interrogated because of religious practices According to a person familiar with the situation in Aksu, a literature teacher named Abdusalam had been interrogated by authorities many times because of his religious practices and was eventually suspended from work. “His wife wore a hijab, and he himself prayed every Friday at home,” the person said. “He was frequently called out by the school because of this, and his wife was also suspended from her job.” Abdusalam was among those detained and jailed in 2017. A security officer from the school’s legal department confirmed the arrests and detentions of the teachers, but said he could not disclose their identities because of confidentiality requirements. About 10% of the institute’s teachers had been arrested, said another staffer. “They’re all in prison now,” said Tuyghun Abduweli. Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
Deeply Troubling DeepSeek AI
Investigative Journalism Reportika (IJ-Reportika) conducted an in-depth analysis of DeepSeek AI, comparing its responses with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok 2.0 AI. Our findings reveal a troubling pattern..
Hong Kong’s Democratic Party plans to disband amid ‘political environment’
Once Hong Kong’s biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party has announced plans to disband amid a political crackdown in the city under two security laws. “It is a decision that we made based on our understanding of the overall political environment,” Chairman Lo Kin-hei told journalists following a meeting of the party’s central committee on Thursday. “Developing democracy in Hong Kong is always difficult, and it’s been especially difficult in the past few years,” Lo told reporters in the party’s headquarters, adding: “This is not what we wanted to see.” Lo said he hoped that Hong Kong would return to the values of “diversity, tolerance and democracy” that were the cornerstones of the city’s past success. The move is widely seen as the symbolic end of any formal political opposition in Hong Kong, where critics of the authorities can face prosecution under security legislation brought in to quell dissent in the wake of the 2019 protests. It follows repeated calls for the party’s dissolution in Chinese Communist Party-backed media like the Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po. The news came just weeks after a court in Hong Kong sentenced 45 democratic politicians and activists to jail terms of up to 10 years for “subversion” after they took part in a democratic primary in the summer of 2020. The ongoing political crackdown has already seen the dissolution of the Civic Party, which disbanded in May 2023 after its lawmakers were barred from running for re-election in the wake of the 2020 National Security Law. The pro-democracy youth activist party Demosisto disbanded in June 2020. ‘That light has faded’ Lo said the disbandment couldn’t go ahead without a vote from a general meeting attended by 75% of the party’s members. He said he will chair a three-person working group to handle the process following what he called a “collective decision” by the Central Committee. Lo declined to comment on reports that party members had been harassed or threatened by people acting as messengers for the Chinese government. He said the party wasn’t in financial difficulty. Founding party member Fred Li said the Democratic Party had “done its duty and shone its light on Hong Kong.” “But we can see today that that light has faded,” Li said in comments reported by the Hong Kong Free Press. Martin Lee, known as the “father of democracy” in Hong Kong, April 26, 2021.(Anthony Wallace/AFP) He said its death would mark the end of democratic party politics in Hong Kong. “The Democratic Party was once the most important party when it came to gauging public opinion, so its death actually represents the ultimate death of public opinion [as a political force] in Hong Kong,” Wong said. ‘We must be vigilant’ He said fears that Hong Kong would become a base for opposition to Chinese Communist Party rule had led Beijing to break its promise that the city could keep its freedoms for 50 years after the 1997 handover. He warned that Beijing was trying to undermine Taiwan’s democracy by placing its supporters in positions of power, much as it did in Hong Kong. “Taiwanese people must be vigilant and must not believe the Chinese Communist Party’s promises to Taiwan that it can keep its freedoms if it submits to Beijing’s rule,” Wong said. “We must be vigilant, and we must resist.” Political commentator Sang Pu said the Democratic Party would never be allowed to field candidates under the current system in Hong Kong. “A political party that doesn’t run for election has no way to raise funds,” Sang said. “They get rejected [by venues] even when they try to hold party events … for spurious reasons like chefs getting into a fight or broken water meters.” “They are being badly suppressed, so at this point it’s probably better to give up,” he said. Recent electoral reforms now ensure that almost nobody in the city’s once-vibrant opposition camp will stand for election again, amid the jailing of dozens of pro-democracy figures and rule changes requiring political vetting. The last directly elected District Council, which saw a landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates amid record turnout that was widely seen as a ringing public endorsement of the 2019 protest movement. The first Legislative Council election after the rule change saw plummeting turnout, while Chief Executive John Lee was given the top job after an “election” in which he was the only candidate. Since Beijing imposed the two national security laws banning public opposition and dissent in the city and blamed “hostile foreign forces” for the resulting protests, hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet amid plummeting human rights rankings, shrinking press freedom and widespread government propaganda in schools. The government has blamed several waves of pro-democracy protests in recent years on “foreign forces” trying to instigate a democratic revolution in Hong Kong. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
China repatriates 200 citizens from Myanmar scam centers amid crackdown
MAE SOT, Thailand – Two hundred Chinese nationals were due to be flown to their homeland on Thursday in aircraft laid on by their government after leaving online fraud centers in an eastern Myanmar district on the border with Thailand, Thai officials said. The Chinese people were brought on buses, 50 at a time, from Myanmar’s Myawaddy district, over a border bridge to the Thai town of Mae Sot, and then taken to a nearby airport for their flight home, witnesses said. “Myanmar authorities and the Border Guard Force have brought Chinese nationals to the second Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, and are handing them over to Thai officials,” Maj. Gen. Maitree Chupreecha, commander of the Thai military’s Naresuan Task Force, told reporters. “A total of 200 people will be repatriated today in groups of 50 every two hours,” he said. It was not clear if the people being flown back to China were organizers of the online fraud that has proliferated in recent years in Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia, or were victims of human traffickers and forced to work in the centers defrauding people online and over the telephone. A first flight left Mae Sot bound for China shortly before noon and three more were due to leave through the day. More flights to China are due on Friday and Saturday, taking more than 1,000 Chinese people home, Thai officials said. Thursday’s flights were the latest in a series of actions over recent weeks aimed at ending the scam center operations that have flourished largely unimpeded in different parts of Southeast Asia for several years. The scamming, known as “pig butchering” in China, involves making contact with unsuspecting people online, building a relationship with them and then defrauding them. Researchers say billions of dollars have been stolen this way from victims around the world. Huge fraud operation complexes are often staffed by people lured by false job advertisements and forced to work, sometimes under threat of violence, rescued workers and rights groups say. Researchers have said governments and businesses across the region have been enabling the operations by failing to take action against the profitable flows they generate. RELATED STORIES China pushes Thailand to act on cross-border scam centers EXPLAINED: What are scam parks? Myanmar militia hosting scam centers says it will deport 8,000 foreigners Thousands of victims But that has changed in recent weeks amid a blizzard of bad publicity triggered by the kidnap and rescue last month of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who was lured to work one of Myawaddy’s fraud operations. The growing public alarm across Asia about kidnapping and forced labor threatened to damage Thailand’s tourist industry and forced China to insist on action by authorities in its southern neighbors to crack down. China’s Assistant Minister of Public Security Liu Zhongyi visited Thailand in late January to focus efforts to combat the call center operations and the human trafficking that supplies their labor force. Thailand took its most decisive action ever against the fraud networks on Feb. 5, cutting cross-border power and internet services and blocking fuel exports to the Myanmar scam zones. The Myanmar junta also stopped fuel shipments to the Myawaddy district controlled by an ethnic minority militia force that is allied with the military government. The ethnic Karen militia that controls Myawaddy and has been hosting and profiting from the online fraud operations said last month it was going to stop fraud and forced labor and send back thousands of the people who have been working in the centers. A Thai activist group, the Civil Society Network for Victim Assistance in Human Trafficking, which has been helping scam center victims, said it has identified at least 2,000 people from more than a dozen countries forced to work at defrauding people around the world. But many thousands more people are believed to be still in the scam centers, in eastern Myanmar and beyond. A Thai member of parliament and head of its National Security Committee said it was important to gather as much information as possible from people being brought out of the scam centers to identify the kingpins and end their operations once and for all. “We need to gather information,” legislator Rangsiman Rome told reporters. “We must verify if they are victims or criminals and whether they know who is behind the call center gangs. This information is crucial for dismantling the transnational crime syndicates,” said Rangsiman. Edited by Mike Firn. RFA Burmese Service contributed to this report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization. We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
Myanmar junta frees nearly 1,000 Rohingya from prison, group says
Myanmar’s military government has released from prison nearly 1,000 members of the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority, a human rights group said on Monday, a rare gesture of goodwill towards the persecuted community. The junta has not announced the release and there has been no explanation as to why they were set free but it comes days after a court in Argentina issued arrest warrants for the junta chief and 22 other military officials for crimes committed against the Rohingya in a 2017 crackdown. “It is clear that the junta wants to cover up the crimes that they’ve committed against Rohingya,” said a senior member of group Political Prisoners Network Myanmar, Thike Htun Oo. “They immediately released the Rohingya from detention as soon as a court in Argentina issued international arrest warrants for them. We must be aware of this,” he told Radio Free Asia on Monday. Most of the 936 people being released on Sunday from prison in the main city of Yangon, including 267 women and 67 children, were arrested after the military overthrew an elected government in 2021, Thike Htun Oo said. They were due to be sent by boat from Yangon, to the Rakhine state capital of Sittwe in western Myanmar, he said. On Saturday, officials from the military’s Immigration Department entered Insein Prison in Yangon to issue the Rohingya with identity documents, Thike Htun Oo said, though adding he could not confirm exactly what type of documents they were given. Details of what those being released had done to be locked up in the first place were not available but most were believed to have been imprisoned for violating restrictions on their movements. RFA tried to telephone the Prison Department spokesperson and the office of the department’s deputy director general for information about the release but they did not answer. Most Rohingya are from Rakhine state and most are stateless, regarded as migrants from South Asia and not one of the ethnic groups classified as indigenous in Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s constitution. RELATED STORIES Myanmar junta bombs Rohingya Muslim village killing 41, rescuers say Rohingya at risk of being forgotten, activists say Violence against the Rohingya explained Forced to fight? Myanmar government troops led a bloody crackdown in Rakhine state in 2017 in response to Rohingya militant attacks on the security forces and more than 700,000 members of the persecuted Rohingya community fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where most remain. U.N. experts later said the military carried out mass killings and gang rapes with “genocidal intent.” The United States in 2022 determined that the violence committed against the Rohingya amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity. The Myanmar military said it was engaged in legitimate security operations. A court in Argentina ruled last week that international arrest warrants be issued for the self-appointed president and junta chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, and 22 other military officials for crimes committed against the Rohingya. Argentina became the first country to open an investigation into serious crimes against the Rohingya under the principle of universal jurisdiction, a legal principle allowing for the prosecution of serious crimes no matter where they were committed. Political analyst Than Soe Naing also said the junta was trying to improve its image in light of the Argentinian court ruling. “They’re releasing the Rohingya in order to try to restore justice from their side but they’re not going to succeed in trying to cover up their criminal mistakes,” he said. The leader of a Rohingya welfare organization said there was a danger those being released would be pressed to fight for the military in Rakhine state where an ethnic minority insurgent group battling for control of the state, the Arakan Army, or AA, has forced junta forces into a few small pockets of territory, including Sittwe. The co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, Nay San Lwin, said the military was already pressing Rohingya men in camps for displaced people in Sittwe to join junta forces. “They are really worried about being forcibly recruited,” he said of those who had been released. Last year, embattled junta forces recruited Rohingya into militias to help fight the AA, which draws its support from the state’s Buddhist, ethnic Rakhine majority. The recruitment by the military of Rohingya led to attacks by the AA in which international human rights organizations said Rohingya civilians were killed. The AA denied that. Translated by Kianan Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff. RELATED STORIES Myanmar junta bombs Rohingya Muslim village killing 41, rescuers say Rohingya at risk of being forgotten, activists say Violence against the Rohingya explained We are : Investigative Journalism Reportika Investigative Reports Daily Reports Interviews Surveys Reportika
