Human rights groups in Malaysia say some 700 nationals may now be trapped in online scam centers across Laos under threat of beatings and electric shock if they fail to meet work targets or try to leave their guarded compounds.
The case highlights what the United Nations and others describe as a rising tide of young men and women being lured into — and trapped in — brutal online scam operations across the Mekong region of Southeast Asia.
The Malaysian International Humanitarian Organization says the number of nationals stuck in Laos is based on reports from some of the trapped victims it and two other Malaysian rights groups have been in contact with by phone and text over the past few months, plus a few who have managed to escape or negotiate their release.
“They’ve been tortured mentally and physically,” the group’s secretary-general, Hishamuddin Hashim, told VOA.
Hishamuddin said the victims are typically lured to Laos with social media ads for well-paid IT or casino jobs, only to be lockup up on arrival and forced to run a range of online love and investment scams on targets across the region and around the world, depending on their language skills. He said the victims report being watched around the clock by guards posted throughout the fenced-off compounds, including some with guns on the ground floors.
“If they don’t want to work, they will be beaten…. Some of them [have] been electrocuted … by electric shock,” he added, all…