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Sri Lankan among hundreds of foreigners freed from Myanmar’s scam centres
More than 250 people from 20 nationalities including a Sri Lankan who had been working in telecom fraud centres in Myanmar’s Karen State have been released by an ethnic armed group and brought to Thailand.
The workers, more than half of whom were from African or Asian nations, were received by the Thai army, and are being assessed to find out if they were victims of human trafficking.
Last week Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra met Chinese leader Xi Jinping and promised to shut down the scam centres which have proliferated along the Thai-Myanmar border.
Her government has stopped access to power and fuel from the Thai side of the border, and toughened up banking and visa rules to try to prevent scam operators from using Thailand as a transit country for moving workers and cash.
Some opposition MPs in Thailand have been pushing for this kind of action for the past two years.
Foreign workers are typically lured to these scam centres by offers of good salaries, or in some cases tricked into thinking they will be doing different work in Thailand, not Myanmar.
The scammers look for workers with skills in the languages of those who are targeted for cyber-fraud, usually English and Chinese.
They are pressed into conducting online criminal activity, ranging from love scams known as “pig butchering” and crypto fraud, to money laundering and illegal gambling.
Some are willing to do the work, but others are forced to stay, with release only possible if their families pay large ransoms. Some of those who have escaped have described being tortured.
The released foreign workers were handed over by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, one of several armed factions which control territory inside Karen State.
These armed groups have been accused of allowing the scam compounds to operate under their protection, and of tolerating the widespread abuse of trafficking victims who are forced to work in the compounds.
The Myanmar government has been unable to extend its control over much of Karen State since independence in 1948.
On Tuesday, Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation, which is similar to the US FBI, requested arrest warrants for three commanders of another armed group known as the Karen National Army.
The warrants included Saw Chit Thu, the Karen warlord who struck a deal in 2017 with a Chinese company to build Shwe Kokko, a new city believed to be largely funded by scams.
The BBC visited Shwe Kokko at the invitation of Yatai, the company which built the city.
Yatai says there are no more scams in Shwe Kokko. It has put up huge billboards all over town proclaiming, in Chinese, Burmese and English, that forced labour is not allowed, and that “online businesses” should leave.
But we were told by local people that the scam business was still running, and interviewed a worker who had been employed in one.
Like the DKBA, Saw Chit Thu broke away from the main Karen insurgent group, the KNU, in 1994, and allied himself to the Myanmar military.
Under pressure from Thailand and China, both Saw Chit Thu and the DKBA have said they are expelling the scam businesses from their territories.
The DKBA commander contacted a Thai member of parliament on Tuesday to arrange the handover of the 260 workers.
They included 221 men and 39 women, from Ethiopia, Kenya, the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Nepal, Uganda, Laos, Burundi, Brazil, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sir Lanka, India, Ghana and Cambodia.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump has filed a $5bn (£3.7bn) lawsuit against the BBC over an edit of his 6 January 2021 speech in a Panorama documentary.
Trump accused the broadcaster of defamation and of violating a trade practices law, according to court documents filed in Florida.
The BBC apologised to Trump last month, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was any “basis for a defamation claim”.
Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”. The BBC has not yet responded to the lawsuit.
Trump said last month that he planned to sue the BBC for the documentary, which aired in the UK ahead of the 2024 US election.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters of his plans. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
In his speech on 6 January 2021, before a riot at the US Capitol, Trump told a crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In the Panorama programme, a clip showed him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The BBC acknowledged that the edit had given “the mistaken impression” he had “made a direct call for violent action”, but disagreed that there was basis for a defamation claim.
In November, a leaked internal BBC memo criticised how the speech was edited, and led to the resignations of the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness.
Before Trump filed the lawsuit, lawyers for the BBC had given a lengthy response to the president’s claims.
They said there was no malice in the edit and that Trump was not harmed by the programme, as he was re-elected shortly after it aired.
They also said the BBC did not have the rights to, and did not, distribute the Panorama programme on its US channels. While the documentary was available on BBC iPlayer, it was restricted to viewers in the UK.
In his lawsuit, Trump cites agreements the BBC had with other distributors to show content, specifically one with a third-party media corporation that allegedly had licensing rights to the documentary outside the UK. The BBC has not responded to these claims, nor has the corporation with the alleged distribution agreement.
The suit also claims that people in Florida may have accessed the programme using a VPN or by using streaming service BritBox.
“The Panorama Documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary before the BBC had it removed,” the lawsuit said
(BBC)
The Situation Report issued by the Disaster Management Center at 06:00AM on 16th December 2025 shows that 70,297 persons belonging to 22,338 house holds are still being housed at 731 safety centers established by the government.
The number of deaths due to the recent disastrous weather stands at 643 while 183 persons are missing.
Latest News
Bondi Beach gunmen who killed 15 after targeting Jewish celebration were father and son, police say
New South Wales Police say 15 people, including a 10 year old girl were killed in a shooting at Bondi Beach on Sunday – their ages range from 10 to 87
The attack happened while an event was being held to mark the start of Hanukkah – police say they’re treating it as a terror incident
The two gunmen were father and son, police say. The 50-year-old man also died at the scene while the 24-year-old remains in hospital in critical condition
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls the attack “an act of pure evil” that “deliberately targeted” the Jewish community
(BBC)
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