JAKARTA: Indonesia on Tuesday began repatriating more than 500 of its nationals freed from online scam centers in Myanmar, officials said, bringing them home from an ordeal where they suffered violence and threats.
\nCyberscam operations, which have thrived in Myanmar\u2019s lawless border areas for several years, lure foreign workers with promises of high-paying jobs but hold them hostage and force them to commit online fraud.
\nAround 7,000 workers from at least two dozen countries have been freed in recent weeks, the majority of them Chinese, but many have been languishing in squalid temporary holding camps on the border between Myanmar and Thailand.
\nFour-hundred Indonesians were returning from Thailand on Tuesday and at least 154 would follow on Wednesday, according to Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Budi Gunawan.
\n\u201cThe Indonesian government cooperated with the Thailand government and the Chinese government for rescuing and repatriating 554 Indonesians,\u201d he told a press conference at the international airport in capital Jakarta.
\nThe group included 449 men and 105 women who became \u201cvictims of large-scale online scamming\u201d in the town of Myawaddy near the Thai border, said Budi.
\n\u201cThe victims… experienced various pressures, physical violence, such as beatings and electrocution, and lastly were threatened with their organs being removed,\u201d he said.
\nJudha Nugraha, the director of citizen protection at Indonesia\u2019s foreign ministry, earlier said that \u201caround 161\u201d nationals would return Wednesday.
\nThe Indonesians were coming back on three flights from Bangkok after crossing into Thailand from Myanmar, officials said.
\nThe first flight carrying 200 freed Indonesians landed on Tuesday morning.
\nJudha said the discrepancy in numbers was due to authorities \u201cstill processing\u201d the second group, adding final numbers would be released on Wednesday after their transfer was complete.
\nIndonesian authorities already repatriated 140 nationals from Myanmar via Thailand last month.
\nAuthorities in Myanmar, under pressure from ally China, have cracked down on the scam compounds.
\nBetween 2020 and September last year, Jakarta repatriated more than 4,700 Indonesians entangled in online scam operations from countries including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, according to foreign ministry data.
\nThe United Nations estimates that as many as 120,000 people \u2013 many of them Chinese men \u2013 may be working in Myanmar scam centers against their will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JAKARTA: Indonesia on Tuesday began repatriating more than 500 of its nationals freed from online scam centers in Myanmar, officials said, bringing them home from an ordeal where they suffered violence and threats. Cyberscam operations, which have thrived in Myanmar\u2019s lawless border areas for several years, lure foreign workers with promises of high-paying jobs but …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78557,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78544\/revisions\/78557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}