Eleven pregnant women among hundreds in limbo at Thai-Myanmar border after scams crackdown, group says

BANGKOK – Eleven pregnant women are among the more than 2,400 people stuck in limbo on after being pulled out of illicit scam compounds in Myanmar and are in urgent need of medical treatment in Thailand, a civil society group said on Friday. 

The 11 women are being kept in a camp with harsh living conditions, scant healthcare and insufficient food for them, Jay Kritiya, a coordinator for the Citizens Network for Human Trafficking Victims told Reuters.

“There were 12 women who are three-to-four months pregnant,” Jay said, “one of them had a miscarriage two days ago.”

Thailand is fronting a regional effort to dismantle scam centres along its borders, which are part of a Southeast Asian fraud network across multiple countries that generate billions of dollars from scams every year, often using people trafficked by criminal gangs, according to the United Nations.

Thailand has for weeks been coordinating efforts to repatriate 7,372 people of about 20 different nationalities from the Myanmar scam operations, many of them to China. Thailand’s foreign ministry on Friday said more than 2,400 were still at the border waiting to be returned to their home countries.    

The Citizens Network for Human Trafficking Victims on March 15 visited the camp where the pregnant women have been kept, run by Myanmar’s militia group, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army. 

The group said the DKBA was providing sufficient care for others but had limited resources and needed help for those requiring medical attention. The group has asked Thai authorities to transfer those in need to Tak province on the Thai side of the border.  

Thailand’s human rights commission in a letter on Wednesday said it has relayed the request to all relevant authorities. 

The top police general leading Thailand’s operations against the scamming network this week told Reuters an estimated 100,000 people were still operating in scam centres at the Thai-Myanmar border, with preliminary investigations indicating hundreds of those pulled out so far had gone there voluntarily. REUTERS

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