At least 22 Ugandans are being held captive in Myanmar after being trafficked there for forced work, according to the Ugandan internal affairs ministry.
The Ugandan government says it is trying to rescue the 17 men and five women who were recruited by “local leaders” in the suburbs of the capital, Kampala.
The victims, who are believed to be aged between 22 and 30, reportedly thought they were being recruited to be employed in supermarkets in Thailand and to do other casual or domestic work.
However, once they arrived in Thailand, they were picked up by local contacts and taken across the border to Myanmar by road.
Derrick Basalirwa Kigenyi, Uganda’s deputy national coordinator for the prevention of human trafficking Focus on Africa podcast: “They are kept there for labour exploitation – mainly doing online illegal activities like hacking into systems to defraud people from all over the world. I think this is to financially benefit maybe the cartels there.
“When you resist, that’s when you face forms of torture. They say you don’t try to escape because you never know – you could lose your life.”
Interpol said reports have been received from Ugandan law enforcement of several citizens being taken to Dubai for employment before being diverted to Thailand and then to Myanmar.
Earlier this year, the UN Human Rights Office released a report which revealed that hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are being forced by organised criminal gangs to work in online romance scams, illegal gambling and cryptocurrency fraud from south-east Asia.
Pia Oberoi, senior advisor on migration and human rights at the UN Human Rights Office (Asia Pacific), “A number of UN agencies have been receiving requests from consular agencies to rescue their citizens from these scam compounds.
“The problem is not every country has a consular presence in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Finding out how and who you can reach to extricate a person you know is in these compounds is very difficult.”