Myanmar junta says demolishing 150 scam hub buildings

YANGON, Myanmar: Myanmar’s military said Sunday it was demolishing nearly 150 buildings in a crackdown on a notorious internet scam compound bordering Thailand — including a gym, a spa and a karaoke parlour.

Sprawling fraud factories have boomed in war-torn Myanmar’s loosely governed border regions, housing workers targeting unsuspecting internet users with romance and business cons worth tens of billions of dollars annually.

Many workers are trafficked into the internet sweatshops, but others go willingly to the compounds which are often furnished with luxury amenities for criminal bosses and their high-earning staff.

Last month Myanmar’s military announced a raid on infamous scam centre KK Park — discovering more than 2,000 scammers and sending 1,500 people fleeing over the border to Thailand.

In an update in state mouthpiece newspaper The Global New Light of Myanmar the junta said it found 148 buildings including dormitories, a four-floor hospital and two-storey karaoke complex.

“101 buildings have been demolished, and the remaining 47 buildings are in progress,” said the newspaper.

AFP was not able to immediately verify the claims, but locals in Myanmar and over the border in Thailand have reported hearing intermittent explosions since the Myanmar military raid began.

Experts say the junta raids are likely limited, choreographed and intentionally publicised as the military walks a tightrope trying to alleviate international pressure to crack down on scam centres without too badly denting profits.

China is a key military backer of the junta, but analysts say Beijing is increasingly irate at the rampant scams targeting and enlisting its citizens.

But cracking down too hard would erode profits enriching militias the junta relies on as key allies in the civil war which has consumed the country since it snatched power in a 2021 coup, monitors say.

Back in February a pressure campaign led by China saw some 7,000 scam workers repatriated in a highly-publicised exodus from Myanmar, while Thailand enacted a cross-border internet blockade in a bid to throttle off the fraud factories.

The military announced initial raids on KK Park on October 19 after an AFP investigation revealed centres including KK Park were expanding despite the apparent crackdown — with Starlink satellite internet receivers installed en masse to skirt the Thai web cut-off.

After the AFP investigation Starlink parent company SpaceX said it had cut signal to more than 2,500 satellite internet terminals in the vicinity of suspected Myanmar scam centres.