Transcript: Emergency Edition: Scams and Shackles
Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.
0:17
Young well educated but out of work and prepared to move abroad for what sounds like a great opportunity. But that's where the scan begins. If you are unable to complete the task, you will be punished with electric shocks.
0:43
A warning for anyone looking for work in Southeast Asia, job scams are on the rise. The victims have been mostly deceived by online ads promising career opportunities abroad with good pay. But they've been eventually forced to work for syndicates involved in online gambling investments and lump scams among others.
Host 1:10
Thank you for joining us for the next hour to in this episode of insight Myanmar podcast. In an age of nearly limitless content, we appreciate that you're choosing to take valuable time out of your day. To learn more about what is happening in Myanmar it's vital for the story to be heard by people around the world and that starts right now with you.
2:03
In my day way that I
2:16
made and there is so much stuff out there.
Brad 2:41
Welcome back, my guest today is going to be talking about an issue that we've probably not noticed most of us, but in recent media coverage has suddenly popped up. And that is the phenomenon of scam centers that exist in Myanmar. Many of our audience are probably familiar with recent reports of very large numbers of victims of the scam operations, being liberated from the facilities where they were being held in northern Myanmar. But very few people truly understand what these scam centers really are and how they operate. So I'd like to thank you for joining us. I know it's been a little bit difficult to get this off the road. But I really appreciate your time. And if you'd like to introduce yourself for the audience and the work that you've been doing, I'd like that.
Jason Tower 3:28
Sure. Yeah. So thanks for having me on. I'm Jason tower. I'm the Myanmar Country Director for the United States Institute of Peace. I've worked on issues in Myanmar for well over a decade now, but with a particular focus on looking at China's relationship with Myanmar, and also on looking at the illicit economy in the country. And over the past couple of years, I've been doing quite a lot of research and US IPs and more broadly looking at some of these trends around some of the growing presence and influence of transnational criminal actors in the country, particularly in partnership with the Myanmar army's border guard forces. We've looked quite extensively at the growing criminal nexus between the Myanmar armies border guard forces in Koh Kong and in Korean. And in particular, we've identified that there's some very dramatic developments that have taken place over the past couple of years which have turned both of these areas into criminal hubs that are now posing direct security threats to countries around the world. That's including to the United States, including to China, including to all of Ossian and really, to every country on the planet at this point. And I guess, you know, one of the things that I'm looking forward to discussing today is really the nature of this crisis and kind of how we got here some of the history behind it.
Brad 5:04
Excellent. So let's jump right into this because it is a very hot button issue. So, you know, as I've expressed to you, I and I think many people when we when we hear this concept of scam centers, we're thinking of, you know, a situation that we might be familiar with from Western Africa, where you've got a lot of people in poverty, who have found that scamming people over the internet is an effective way to eke out a living. It's not, it's not great, but you know, it's surviving in a very difficult situation. And so they're flooding to, you know, cyber cafes, and they're trying to make their living that way or those similar syndicates that we see in India. Is that comparable to what we've got in Myanmar? No,
Jason Tower 5:47
this is on a whole nother level. These are highly sophisticated scams that are using AI, they're using forced labor. They're using cryptocurrency platforms, and pretty sophisticated FinTech often that is developed directly by criminal networks, or some of the collaborators of these criminal networks. But the types of scams that we're seeing now, I mean, they're targeting vulnerable victims with laser precision, right. So it's not just a random email that you're seeing sent out somewhere, there's actually a deliberate attempt to go on to social media, and identify people either through an online dating app or through an application like LinkedIn, or Facebook, or pick your favorite social media application WeChat tick tock, but, you know, they're there. They're going on to these different applications and finding people who have a common type of vulnerability. Maybe it's someone who is in their 40s, or 50s, who is looking for romance. That's where you often see this happening on the dating apps. Maybe it's someone who is looking for a new job. And that's where you're seeing some of these scams come up on the different types of recruitment and hiring platforms. But what often is happening in these scams are the perpetrators will first approach a victim, really building trust with that individual trying to connect with them at a personal level, maybe many listeners have received one of these random messages on WhatsApp or on LinkedIn or another social media platform where basically someone just reaches out and says, Hi, or maybe they'll send a message, you know, saying, Hey, did you get my delivery, and then the person who receives the message clicks on the person's icon on that particular social media app, and they see the picture of an attractive individual, and they strike up a conversation, that conversation may go on for a couple of months, and trust is built between the perpetrator and the victim. And then once that trust is established, you'll suddenly see the perpetrator introduce some form of an investment opportunity. Maybe a link comes across to download a particular cryptocurrency Trading App. And then before you know it, the perpetrator shows the victim how to use that app and shows the victim how profitable that app might potentially be. We're seeing victims put hundreds of 1000s of dollars into these types of scams, which are referred to as pig butchering scams. And I think that this term, which comes from the Chinese shots, hoopin, it really does justice to the type of scam that you're seeing basically, through this long period of time, the perpetrator is fattening up the pig. And then ultimately, once the perpetrator has assessed that the victim has put most of their assets into this particular investment platform, the platform disappears, the money is taken away and the victim is left really harmed on two levels, their assets are stolen, but also that trust has been violated. In some cases. You know, it's someone who the victim thought was a lover has turned out to be actually a scammer. And these sorts of things are happening now really targeting people in just about every language you can imagine targeting people all over the globe, but particularly in the United States, in China, in India, Japan, Korea, I mean, many countries around the world are being hit very hard now by these particular forms of scams. The other element of this that is perhaps even more scary is that the perpetrators are often also victims. So the people who are being scammed probably don't recognize this at the time but the individuals who are making these phone calls have also been tricked. They've been tricked into circumstances of modern slavery. Also through very sophisticated types of fraud. Many of them are people who have background in the tech sector, for example, or who responded to online job advertisements went through several rounds of interviews. And then after being offered a job, saw that their new employer purchased them tickets, flew them off to a destination, like Bangkok, or Dubai or Singapore. And then suddenly, from there, they're picked up at the airport. And the next thing they know they're brought into one of these scam centers, maybe it's a drive across the border, from Thailand into Myanmar, that's one of the patterns we're often seeing. Or in the case of Dubai, maybe after working in Dubai for a month or two, suddenly, the person is told they're being transferred, even sometimes to Yangon, or to Bangkok again. And then the same sort of pattern happens where this person is brought across the border, trafficked, and then literally forced to scam, they're being tortured. They're being beaten, there are psychological threats against these people, until ultimately they're broken down, and they obliged they begin engaging in this form of very precise scamming.
Brad 11:23
So there's a lot that you've, you've opened the doors to there, and I definitely want to investigate it. But just for a moment, before we look at the people who are coerced into this, the scams themselves. So you refer on the one hand to these big butchering scams, you refer to investment opportunities, say, you know, cryptocurrency trading platforms, something along these lines, is that the only thing that we're seeing are, are we also seeing the more traditional sort of lover scam where you, you know, you create this remote romantic attachment, and then you pretend that you're having financial troubles, and you want to give the other person this opportunity to feel like your Savior and your hero and send you large sums of money. Is that also a thing?
Jason Tower 12:09
That seems to be happening less often. I mean, in the scam Syndicate, some of the people who've been rescued out of them have actually brought with themselves whole entire manuals that give a lot of different scripts. And so depending on the particular victim that has been identified, there's going to be a different script, you know, kind of for many different demographics that are out there. But the common thing that we're seeing in these scams is that for the romance related scams, it's often that the perpetrator will try to build a common future or a shared future with the victim to talk about, oh, why don't we look at you know, buying a house together? Why don't we invest jointly in this crypto platform, you know, it's a very lucrative investment opportunity. And then once we've invested will ultimately be able to go ahead and and work together on on planning that future, you know, buying a house together, getting married, and so on. So that's one of the ways one of the iterations you've seen of the scams. There are a lot of others, though. I mean, we've also heard of scams that are much cruder, which might just involve, you know, someone sending a link across to the target. And in this case, what you're often seeing is, is these different types of blackmail scams where maybe, for example, the victim that's being targeted, is approached with, for example, the opportunity to engage in some sort of, of online adult activity. And the scammer will send a link to an app over which that can take place. Once that link is sent across the individual clicks on it, and it suddenly will give the perpetrator access to all of the contact list in that individual's phone. And so then you'll you'll you'll sort of see kind of in what transpires that the victim ends up doing something quite embarrassing on the application, some video footage of that is recorded. And then once that's finished, you'll see the perpetrator begin to you know, blackmail the person and they actually will show hey, look, I've got all the contacts in your phone here, send this amount of money over to this particular crypto wallet within the next 24 hours or else. And so that's another iteration of the scams, but the thing is, is that they're changing constantly. There's all sorts of different iterations of them, that are quite targeted to protect Hillary victims.
Brad 15:01
And that's what I want to ask about. So you're talking about a range of different things like you're talking about getting people to invest, you're talking about getting people to compromise themselves on video, you're talking about blackmail. And you're saying that you've got the script books, where they've got all these different types of, of scam scripts. But you're also saying that they're specifically targeting their their victims. So on the one hand, it almost looks like they're saying, Look, cast a wide net, and whatever you catch, we've got a script ready for that? And on the other hand, it seems like they're specifically trying to identify certain types of targets. So what is the operation here?
Jason Tower 15:41
Yeah, so I mean, what we're seeing happen often is that, you know, they will kind of sort through large numbers of social media accounts. And the reason why LinkedIn is one of the places where these perpetrators are looking is because often on LinkedIn, you'll be able to see whether or not an individual has, you know, established themselves in a particular career, if they're likely to have certain levels of assets, you can get quite a lot of information about someone by looking at what's there on that LinkedIn account. And the same thing with a lot of the dating apps, right? I mean, the dating apps also will have large amounts of information about who a person is, what their financial picture might look like, and also what some of their vulnerabilities might be. We've seen in some very tragic and heartbreaking cases where some of the criminal syndicates will try to identify individuals who are terminally ill with families, and then they will reach out to these individuals kind of build a relationship of compassion, and then introduce an investment opportunity kind of premised around well, you know, you're you're kind of reaching the end of your life, you could put in some resources into this investment platform, and then you'd be able to leave much more for your children, you know, to be able to enjoy in the future. So there's, you know, sort of these types of scams that you're seeing target that demographic, but that's kind of the point here is that the criminal syndicates, you know, they're getting access to large amounts of data that's they're often publicly available. While those in some cases, you are seeing the open sales of WhatsApp accounts or have Gmail accounts, for example. But often, it's information that comes sort of public access from online dating apps, or from other social media apps, where people would place that information. And then the scammers are actually based on you know, the the individual enter the initial interactions with these individuals, more or less putting them into a type Oh, this is someone that I could use kind of a retirement scam on, or this is someone I can use a romance scam on. Or this is someone that I maybe could use a scam that involves, you know, blackmail and embarrassment on. So they're really being very deliberate about gathering information about who might have a particular vulnerability, assessing that vulnerability, and then introducing a scam that is that is suited towards attacking that person's vulnerability.
Brad 18:18
Okay, interesting. And so just so that we are clear on this. If I remember correctly, the number that was given this might have been two or three weeks ago, 30,000 people were released from Myanmar, is that correct? That's what
Jason Tower 18:35
the Chinese government is reporting that it's in excess of 30,000 people that have been released. And there's another statistic that has been provided by the United Nations Office of the High Commission on Human Rights, which indicates that there are around 120,000 people in total, and Myanmar who are basically trapped inside of these scam syndicates. So if that number is correct, I mean, that's roughly more or less, a fourth of the total people who are involved in scamming and Myanmar.
Brad 19:12
In Myanmar, the 30,000, who were released is a quarter of the total,
Jason Tower 19:17
a quarter of the total in Myanmar. Now the same report gives a number of about 100,000 for Cambodia, right. And then, in addition to that, this is also taking place on mass scale in Laos, probably a similar number there. And then you're also seeing pockets of this happening in the Philippines in Indonesia and Malaysia, in Dubai. And even recently, there was a scam compound that was discovered and crackdown on in Peru.
Brad 19:48
So add an estimate. Globally, would we be talking about a half a million people? Roughly?
Jason Tower 19:56
Yes, I think that sounds about right, that might be about out the number of people that are involved in this sort of criminal business involved in in these pig butchering scams.
Brad 20:09
Okay, and so a half a million people you got you got to feed them, you got to clothe them. So what what kind of money other criminals organizing this actually standing to make?
Jason Tower 20:21
I mean, we're talking about billions, right? So there's some information that is available on actual losses. And I think one of the challenges is is for these particular types of pig butchering scams. Up until very recently, you didn't see where law enforcement was collecting information on this particular type of scamming. But there is a statistic for 2022 from the FBI that that indicates that there was about 3.3 billion in losses to the United States. There's a statistic from a Chinese police academy that losses in China in 2019, were around 17 billion US dollars. And then there's some estimates from other countries. Thailand, for example, there are estimates that around 150 million US dollars were lost in in 2022. Other countries have estimates as well. But some of the individuals that we're working with doing research on this, I mean, together, we've kind of come up with a number in the range of potentially as much as 100 billion US dollars or more per year being stolen through these forms of scams. Now.
Brad 21:35
Just to clarify, did you say 100? billion with a B? That's
Jason Tower 21:38
right. 100 billion US dollars in the way that that number is? is calculated is that generally speaking, cases of fraud are dramatically underreported, right? And a conservative estimate of that under reporting is about a factor of 10. So if one, sorry, so if $1 is reported as being stolen, it probably means that there were a total of $10 that were actually taken. So if you do the math, I mean, if if losses were 3.3 billion in the US, you take that by a factor of 10, you come up with 33 billion if there were losses of 17 point 9,000,017 point 9 billion a year in China. And you multiply that by a factor of 10. I mean, wow, we're talking about a huge amount of money here. So that's why we're saying that it's it's likely again, this is the big problem is that many countries are not actually at collecting information, collecting and sharing data on this to different platforms like Interpol, or for example, like the Bali process on Transnational crime. But those are some rough estimates of what losses potentially could be to these scam syndicates. And I think what's also significant is if you look at the sort of the size of some of these different facilities that have been constructed by the scam syndicate owners, the compound owners, they're massive, right? I mean, we're talking about these gigantic buildings in Koh Kong and an across the Korean areas in Myanmar, these massive compounds and casino cities also in the territory controlled by the United State army up in the China border area. So you've seen there's there's been this massive infrastructure build up around this whole scamming industry.
Brad 23:37
And so, okay, so let's delve into this because it was cybercrime is not new. I mean, we've got Russian cyber crime syndicates, we've got Chinese cyber crime syndicates, you know, Indian cyber crime syndicates, this is not new, but this operation is a whole other ballgame. We're talking about modern day slavery in in a very literal sense. So what what, describe to me the facilities that we're talking about, like what, what is the inside of this facility? Like, What is life like for the people living and working there?
Jason Tower 24:10
Yeah, so if you take, for example, one of the more notorious of these compounds, so there's a compound called the KK Park, which is located not far from me, allottee, which is across from Mesa on the Thailand side, right along the Moy River. Kick a park consists of roughly 100 different buildings, that from the outside I mean, this looks almost like a prison facility. So you've got Bart off Windows you've got these large concrete walls that are surrounding the compounds compounds are heavily guarded by the Myanmar armies Korean border guard force which is one of the best armed of the border guard forces in the country, arguably better armed than a lot of units of the Myanmar army itself. But then inside of these compounds, you basically have all of these dormitories, which may accommodate somewhere in the range of six to 10 people or in some cases more. And then alongside all these dormitories, you have kind of small working spaces, right, which each of these these spaces might have a setup of in the range of 30 or 40, maybe up to 50. desks with computers, number of cell phones for each of the forced labor scammers, and you've got people inside that are being forced to work, you know, 1418 hours a day, and these complexes that are given targets, either for the number of potential victims that they have to hook on a daily basis, as well as some, in some cases, targets for the amount of money that they have to steal from the victims that they're reaching out to on these social media apps. There's facilities in here for torture, right. And so we've heard stories that some of the scam compounds have actually been constructed with torture rooms inside of them where people are electrocuted or beaten, or were even worse things happen to these individuals when either they refuse to scam or when they don't meet their targets. There's a lot of video footage and survivor testimony that talks about people being electrocuted and beaten in this way, or submitted to psychological torture, you know, if you don't scam, then you'll be sold to even the individuals involved in the underground organ harvesting kind of business, you know, trafficking, human organs. So these are the sorts of threats that are being made against individuals that are inside of the compounds. Another element of this is, of course, the way in which these individuals are constantly being billed and charged for things inside of the compound. So you know, the scam compound operators are charging them for the water, they drink every meal that they take for their rumen on a daily basis. And all of these bills add up over time, right. And so it may actually be even if someone is scamming, that, once you consider all of the costs that the individual is being billed for by the scam syndicates, they may not even be bringing in sort of, I guess, on paper, positive revenue flows each month, in many cases. And so then the scam syndicates will indicate that these people have amassed high levels of debt.
Brad 28:09
That That hurt my brain. Let's move back there. So you're telling me that we are talking about organizations where human beings are quite literally being bought and sold, in some cases, to organ harvesting, criminal syndicates, and yet simultaneously, the literal not figurative, human slaves are being billed for food and lodging on a monthly basis, I'm I'm trying to square this away. This Okay, hang on. I'm just very confused. How does this work? Like? I'm so confused. Yeah,
Jason Tower 28:51
so I mean, this is a mass scale operation, there's a very clear division of labor inside of these scam compounds, the compound operators are employing managers who are responsible for more or less ensuring that the security personnel inside of the compounds are able to Yeah, keep track of all of these different sorts of things, you know, keep track of the amount of food someone has been given or the amount of water that someone has been given, keep a running tabulation and Bill for all the costs. And then of course, keep a tabulation of how the person is doing in terms of scamming. Right and so in terms of specifically how they go about this often the way they're doing it is that you know, one particular you know, I guess you would call the these are its modern slaves, right? But one scammer is is is told that their role is basically to build trust with individuals right so you know, maybe they'll they'll reach out onto WhatsApp and They'll make, you know, several 100 connections each day and they'll find a few people that they're able to continue carrying out those conversations with, they'll establish that trust with them. And then once they get to the point where they can start talking about cryptocurrency cryptocurrency investment, if that individual seems to be open to it and willing, then that account will be passed over to someone at a higher level, who will then start working on on actually stealing money from that individual. Right. So I mean, there's a division of labor that goes on within these these compounds, where you have different individuals responsible for different aspects of the criminal operation. But then, you know, in cases where someone is not performing, or in cases where someone you know, begins to be hesitant, that's where you'll have the sort of the security within the compound, target that person bring them out and, you know, begin punishing them in some way. And then if over a period of time, you have an individual who simply is not performing, say, they're not bringing in any revenue to the scam syndicate at all. They're racking up this big bill, while that scam syndicate will then tell the person, hey, you're being transferred or sold to another compound. And in some cases, the the amount of money, you know, for the sale of that individual could be depending on the individual's background and their their prospects for earning revenue for the scam Syndicate, it could be a few $1,000, or it could be 20, or 30,000. But that then is going to go on to that person's bill, right? I mean, the price on that person's head then increases and at some point, you know, if someone just simply is not performing at all, the scam syndicates are looking to cash out. And I think that's where some of these threats around the the organ harvesting are coming in. I mean, this is kind of a bit of a gray area, you know, some people claim that this is actually happening. If you look on on Chinese social media, you'll see that there are countless numbers of posts that talk about our organ harvesting, taking place in these facilities in Myanmar, or in facilities in Laos or elsewhere. Specifically, how this happens, though, is not very well documented. But there have been some cases where we've even heard governments coming out and acknowledging, hey, this has happened, we've discovered a body with with organs missing, for example. So there is some evidence to show that this is happening, I think what's more likely is that these criminal networks, I mean, they're connected. You know, they're really they're probably criminal in nature, right. So they're involved in the scamming, but they have contacts with people who specialize in human trafficking, and hence, that's how they're able to traffic all of these individuals into this scam compounds. They have contacts to people who are involved in dealing with black market for organs and organ harvesting. And so that's where potentially you could see someone being sold, you know, to individuals who are involved in that particular criminal enterprise. This is a very frightening and I think a lot of the the witnesses who are coming out are talking about, you know, how inside these compounds, they were threatened with being sold to, you know, criminal organizations involved in in organ harvesting, and in black market organ trade. So, there does seem to be quite a lot of evidence that this is in fact happening.
Brad 33:42
So, okay, so in fairness, it is unconfirmed whether the organ harvesting is is a thing. Although the claims are there, I've also heard other types of claims. So even if it isn't the organ harvesting, are we confident in saying that other types of, of human abuse are involved in this that even if it's not specifically organ harvesting, being sold off to you know, sex slavery or being sold off to, let's say, an illegal mining conglomerate to work in a in a high risk mining venture? Are these realistic possibilities for the for the people in the scam centers?
Jason Tower 34:25
That actually is very well documented. There have been rescues facilitated by some NGOs that specialize in trying to assist victims of human trafficking who have collected witness testimony from individuals who were sold into sex slavery or into prostitution, for example. So that is, in fact something that has been documented in these scam syndicates. Along with that, you know, there's another element of this Where the scam syndicates, in addition to punishing people who are not performing, they're also rewarding people inside of the scam compounds who are successful at scamming. And often, one of the rewards that is offered to people is access to, unfortunately, I mean, individuals who would appear to be people who are in sort of forced sex work, or even there'll be given say for example, narcotics. So that's another thing that we have heard has happened inside of these scam syndicates as well is that the the syndicate operators are offering access to sex workers or drugs in exchange for good performance.
Brad 35:46
Yeah, so drugs is something I completely forgot about is that so they there's also interaction with with the drug cartels, so is it possible that these people would be forced into drug mewling and things like that is what you're saying?
Jason Tower 35:58
It would seem so and in fact, if you look at some of the background of these compound owners, I mean, up in the Koh Kong area, one of the big compound owners is an entity called the fully Light Company which is controlled by one of the key clans that you know, works under the Myanmar army in managing the kokang self administered zone and the kokang border guard force, but this fully like company has involvement and has previously, there's been lots of allegations against this company for involvement in chemical precursors and narcotics and drug trafficking. And then we've also seen where in some of the the nightclubs for example, operated by the same entity that there's been, you know, narcotics drugs available inside of those those nightclubs as well. So this would, I guess, give one indication of how, you know, there's relationship in terms of some of the the higher level players that are operating these these compounds, they have involvement in narcotics, they have involvement in you know, the fully like company has also been involved in illicit trade. It's been involved in issues around illicit timber. So it's, it's, it's really they're, they're probably criminal in nature, they're engaged in a wide range of criminal activity.
Brad 37:29
That's, that's absurd. So before I get on to actually the Organising bodies, because that is fascinating in and of itself. Just one thing that's been playing on my mind, as you've been talking, when, when you were saying that these people are getting billed, and that even every time they're purchased, that sort of Bill accrues that implies. And so this is why I need to clarify this with you in implies that, in fact, at least on paper, the people in the scam centers are receiving the money that they scam, that it is, in fact, their money. And they're just giving part of that in terms of owed, you know, loan repayments, to the to the people running the operation, are they actually receiving money, at least theoretically? Or why? Why are they being billed? How does this work?
Jason Tower 38:22
I mean, theoretically, there's the possibility of someone, you know, kind of, maybe willingly being in one of these skin syndicates and willingly scamming there. There are some, I mean, there's some some evidence that that is, is is in fact the case. But I think generally speaking, I mean, these are operations, these scam syndicates, their operations that really thrive on perpetrating fraud, right. And they're perpetrating fraud on all levels here. They're perpetrating fraud in terms of the people that they target to bring into the syndicates to, to perpetrate the crimes. They're perpetrating fraud in terms of all of the individuals around the world that they're reaching out to and victimizing through the people that they're holding inside of these criminal compounds. So I think, you know, the reality here is that the majority of people in the compounds, they're never going to see freedom unless they take tremendous risk in trying to escape from or be rescued from the compound. Or alternatively, they're also not really going to be seeing much in terms of actual benefits or revenue. I mean, at the end of the day, this compound, the compound owners are going to, you know, they have full control over these people, right? I mean, they can decide more or less how much someone gets and, you know, they may try to do things to encourage someone who seems to be particularly good at scamming to to continue to do more. But at the end of the day, I mean, these people are an extremely vulnerable circumstances and And you know, they're in parts of the world where there's really no recourse to our access to justice in any way. So, unfortunately for most of them, at the end of the day, they're going to end up being lucky if they can leave these compounds with their lives.
Brad 40:15
Of course, and so, let's let's look at the overall organization of this, because the disturbing theme in what you're seeing is just how clinically businesslike all of these these operations seem to be, which, you know, is just juxtaposed with the fact that these are enterprises that deal in, in the purchase of human beings and the subsequent, you know, torture of those individuals. So you're talking about these being run by companies that have names like that, that seem to actually exist as as cohesive business entities, and that have the collaboration of local government slash military authority. So who is actually running these, these these scam centers who's responsible for funding this all?
Jason Tower 41:09
So I, there's an interesting history here of how this grew out of illicit offshore gambling, which targets largely and traditionally as targeted largely a Chinese market, I mean, in China. You know, any form of gambling other than state sanctioned lotteries is illegal. And it's illegal for Chinese nationals to operate offshore gambling centers or facilities that target Chinese nationals. And yet, you've really seen because there's such a high demand for this in such a large market for online gambling in China that you have just huge numbers of people that over the past decade and a half have left China, they've gone to the Philippines to Cambodia, their destinations in Southeast Asia. And they've set up these online gambling operations, which got involved in, you know, siphoning off vast amounts of money from Chinese individuals who decided to, you know, go online and to to, you know, play some of these online games, gambling games or online lotteries. All of this is again, illegal, right? And so, Chinese police started to crack down on this in the Philippines and in Cambodia over the past decade, you also saw some crackdowns on this attempted in Myanmar as well. And, you know, I guess, the thing here is that all of this is illegal in China, right. So what these individual groups needed to do was figure out how to protect themselves from Chinese law enforcement, who might ultimately try to, you know, extend the reach of Chinese law enforcement into other countries and to prevent them from, you know, continuing to operate these these online gambling facilities. Well, you know, it seems that it was around 2017, that a lot of the online gambling facilities started turning increasingly to perpetrating fraud. And I guess, you know, the, the logic here is, I mean, if you're kind of an operator of one of these online gambling sites, and you have maybe law enforcement coming after you occasionally shutting down your website or cutting off access in China, you're having to change the website, the URL, the address, very, very regularly. And so, you know, the question is, well, why actually operate a legitimate online casino when maybe you could just instead engage in outright fraud, right? I mean, you've got people who put money into a casino account thinking that they're going to be able to potentially win something through making bets. Instead, they put money into that account, and that account has just been taken down by the operator disappears, and the person's assets are stolen. So around 2017, you started seeing that happen, more and more often kind of targeting a population in China. And as that practice increased, you started to see then Chinese law enforcement going after some of these different players operating these things, again, a lot of them initially being present in the Philippines where there was a whole legal framework that was set up for online gambling in that country. I'll be it. quite poorly regulated. until more recently, when you've seen the Philippine Government kind of look into a lot of these issues much more So by I guess about 2017, what you started to see happen was a lot of these criminal networks that have been based in the Philippines, you know, operating these different forms of fraudulent online gambling syndicates, they started looking for new hubs, new places where they could locate and so a lot of them turn to C and Oakville and Cambodia. But then also, a number of them turned to the Korean areas in Myanmar. And they turned in particular to the leaders of the Korean border guard force, cit do and Mo tune, who really met them with open arms. And you saw, in particular, one, now quite prominent Chinese criminal actor, whose name is Dylan Shaw, or shutter Jiang, and who operates a company that's known as the yacht Pty international holdings Group company, he decided to go into the Caribbean areas and build this massive multibillion dollar casino city called the Shea cocoa yacht Thai New City project. What was interesting about this is I mean, it was done in collaboration with the border guard force. But it aimed to provide sort of a full set of solutions to online gambling outfits, that would allow them to kind of move in seamlessly into space inside of, you know, this, this large city. And it also provided them with all of the digital tools that they would need to transfer money in and out of casinos, using cryptocurrencies. Right. And the use of the cryptocurrencies and the use of these third party applications that were set up also provided a layer of cover a layer of, of, of kind of distance between the operators of these casino operations and, and law enforcement. And so, you know, this massive city was built up from 2017, up until about 2020. And then, you know, you you saw just well over 10,000, people kind of move into this got to a new city, between that same period of time. So, you know, you saw more and more people that were involved in illicit online gambling, fraudulent online gambling kind of move into this space. This particular city was built to host Around 90,000 people. So I mean, we're talking about something that is really quite large Now, fast forward ahead, then to the pandemic. And this is really where you started to see some pretty significant shifts that led to the current crisis that we're facing now with the use of all this forced labor because before the pandemic, you really didn't see where this type of practice of modern slavery was being done inside of of the the casino operations. It was generally people were were willingly going in and they were, you know, playing a role and operating these online casinos. Well, when you got to the pandemic period, you know, you had just seen the development and the rise of all of these new gambling facilities in places like shea cocoa, and suddenly, the syndicates lost entirely access to labor. And what happened here is that the Chinese government basically called all of its nationals back from Southeast Asia, really, you know, telling Chinese nationals come back or else plus China started to introduce a lot of new capital controls that made it more and more difficult for these online gambling operators to operate offshore gambling facilities. And so it was really I guess, about three or four months into the pandemic that we started first hearing rumors about the people being kidnapped, and brought into places like Sri Coco Yatta, Thai New City, and that continued sort of throughout the pandemic, where you heard stories about more and more people being kidnapped or trafficked into these these compounds. But then the other thing you started hearing was that increasingly, rather than there being casinos inside of the compounds, there were instead scam syndicates that were involved in these pig butchering scams, which were purportedly much more lucrative than operating casinos. And it was much easier actually to victimize individuals through these different forms of scam shifting away from casinos over to cryptocurrency. which was less regulated easier to kind of perpetrate fraud around. So really kind of, during this pandemic period, you saw many of the operators of the casinos shift over to perpetrating these crypto based scams. But because of they had lost access to the Chinese labor market, they started looking to other sources of labor, particularly forced labor and traffic labor. After things started to open up a little bit, during the pandemic, that's when you started to see all of these fraudulent HR advertisements begin to emerge. And we started hearing cases of people who had applied for what appeared to be a legitimate online job being trafficked also into these scam syndicates.
Brad 50:47
So you spoke a lot about online gambling, which, of course, is illegal in China. And And China is obviously a very big market, there are a lot of people in China who want to do gambling. So it makes sense that that illegal gambling would would would attract a crowd. What I'm wondering about is, I happen to know that up in the north northeast of Myanmar, there are many places near the Chinese border right across from the Chinese border, which existed, not to operate online services, but to operate tangible brick and mortar criminal services. You know, whether this is, you know, the fruits of sex trafficking of exotic animal trade, weapon, trade, drug trade, what have you, you know, all manner of dog fights and all these sorts of things. Is there like some sort of division between these places that existed to attract large physical numbers of Chinese tourists to engage in actual tangible physical criminal activity in Myanmar, and then they could fly back over the border. And those places that existed to operate, you know, the actual server farms for online criminal organizations? Or is it all one and the same thing?
Jason Tower 52:07
Here? No, I mean, I think that you have kind of a different history of the criminal enterprises that are up in the China Myanmar border area, you had a lot of physical casinos that were there, you know, that go back to the early 90s. And which, similarly, I mean, there were lots of issues around people being sort of tricked to go across the border from China, being given credit and the casinos losing the money and then being held, you know, and beaten until relatives sent funds across to kind of cover that that gambling debt, right. So there were lots of cases like this, but also the issues with prostitution, with sex, trade with narcotics, all of those things, I think, have historically plagued the China Myanmar border area. But, you know, starting from about 2009, you started to see some pretty significant changes in the border area, particularly after the establishment of the Kong border guard force. In August of 2009, the current commander in chief of the Myanmar army, he led this operation that defeated the ethnic armed organization that once controlled the CO Kong territory, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance army. And he set up this new border guard force in collaboration with several of the former leaders of the MMDA, who defected over to the military side. And who signed this this deal, this border guard force deal, which basically meant that as a border guard force, you would fall under the control of the Myanmar army, you would fight for the Myanmar army, you would integrate politically with the Myanmar army and its political party, the USDP an exchange and in exchange for that you would get the right to develop your territory, more or less in any way that you saw fit. So in that regard, I mean, the Myanmar military gave kind of a mandate and protection to the cocagne border guard force to begin building, basically kind of the equivalent of a Las Vegas a massive casino city right on the China border. So they built a lot of these very large, very fancy brick and mortar types of casinos up there, of course, where you saw all of these other sorts of things that tend to accompany highly unregulated casinos, right? I mean, all sorts of issues of money laundering, other forms of criminality going on inside of those casinos, prostitution, drugs, etc, etc. So you From 2009, all the way up until the pandemic, kokang was really quite alive and thriving, and you had many people coming cross border from China going and playing in those casinos. Quite a few of them. I mean, were actually real casinos where you'd see people winning and losing. But because of some of the sensitivities, you also had a lot of kind of middlemen operating in those casinos, who would offer credit or who would serve as kind of junkets in those casinos such that it would give the opportunity, say to someone who was a public servant in China to be able to go in and gamble but without having to bring large amounts of money outside of the country. Then what happened really, after the pandemic was that entire sector just overnight it it had no business whatsoever, right, because once the border closed, you no longer really had any Chinese going across the border and and frequenting any of those casinos. And that's where I think the opportunity opened up for a lot of the scam syndicates to start going into the Koh Kong territories and taking over a lot of those casino buildings. And so you started, I think, kind of shortly after China, closed the border and began calling its its nationals back sort of this influx of different criminal syndicate groups who formed partnerships with the border guard force and with the border guard force casino companies to begin doing all of this pig butchering, you know, these these online scams. And so I guess that's that's kind of the history that that saw, you know, sort of convergence of the traditional criminality that you saw on the Chinese Myanmar border with a lot of this new stuff that initially started coming in from Cambodia into the Thai Myanmar border lands around 2017. I
Brad 57:02
don't want to sensationalize this or trivialize but it almost sounds like a like a Scorsese type of, you know, gangster movie or, or, you know, something about like, in the 1920s gangsters in Chicago, this idea of these criminal enterprises, and you've got these powerful armed groups that are just vying for control over these businesses. And and that's, that's the heart and soul of what they're doing. They're not fighting over territory, and they're not fighting over, you know, conventional resources. They're fighting over who owns the casino, who owns the the scam center, it's I don't know, like the whole time you're talking. I'm just thinking back to two things that have happened in the past, where we've seen this play out this exact same mentality. Playing out is is this very much like a revival of, let's say, 1920s, Chicago and northeastern United States and the turf wars between criminal gangs or is there a fundamental difference here?
Jason Tower 58:06
I mean, I think a lot of this relates to the approach that the Myanmar military took to trying to deal with ethnic insurgencies across all of Myanmar. I mean, it's systematically looked to co opt different ethnic armed organizations or to play different ethnic armed organizations or ethnic nationalities groups off of one another to keep them highly divided. And one way that the Myanmar military historically has been able to do this is by, you know, coercing or pushing groups into accepting deals like the border guard force deal that you saw, happen in both Koh Kong and in Qur'an With the rise of these two border guard forces in 2009. I mean, the MMDA, of course, has a long history of involvement in narcotics and illicit economy, many of the ethnic armed organizations do just like the Myanmar army does. But you know, fundamentally, any of these groups that became border guard forces, they did so for one reason, because becoming a border guard force meant that you could perpetrate all sorts of illicit activities, all sorts of criminal activity with the protection of the Myanmar army, provided that you agreed ultimately to, you know, align with the Myanmar army politically and to provide it the support that it needed to try to continue its efforts to crack down on other ethnic nationalities groups. And so really, I think that's that's the main reason why any of these groups became border guard forces was so that it would give them protection and space to engage openly and whatever form of criminal activity they wanted to And so that's why I would refer to an area like the area controlled by the current border guard force or by the kokang border guard force as a Special Criminal zone because it's basically a part of the country that is more or less purposed specifically for all sorts of illicit activity. And that's what you saw these different clans, that you know, collaborated with the Myanmar army to create the kokang border guard force do they brought in a lot of different actors from the Chinese underworld. They built business relationships with them that would be able to facilitate all that illicit activity in the kokang casinos. And that's what you saw chip do do later on when he brought in criminal cartels and the leaders have very, very openly I mean, some of of chip news other partners include one cup coy or broken tooth, who is the former head of the 14k Cartel, Chip new signed a deal with US border guard force under mo tune signed a deal with with Wonka koi to basically enable him to build another big casino city also in the Korean Borderlands. And that casino city has also gotten deeply involved in perpetrating all of these hate butchering scams and other forms of associated crimes. So I think that's kind of the trend and really the key enabler of all of this stuff is the Myanmar army at the end of the day. And it's it's really fundamentally the ability of criminal actors to go into these spaces and to have kind of a an area where they can perpetrate any form of criminal activity they want to and impunity is because of the way that the Myanmar army has approached, you know, its process of trying to consolidate and oppress these different ethnic insurgencies over the past 70 years.
Brad 1:01:55
So I think one of the very important questions that that follows from that statement is the degree to which the Myanmar military knew about this like, like, obviously, there is no way that they don't know what's going on, if we know what's going on, they know what's going on. And one would presume that even you know, two years ago, or three years ago, before the coup back when they had, you know, still considerable power and oversight, they would have known that these things are happening. The question is, did they know that this would occur? When they gave their blessing to setting up with what you're referring to as the Special Criminal zones? Did they anticipate that setting up these these special zones and and devolving the powers to the local rebel groups or the local militia groups? What have you would lead to this just phenomenal industry of endemic human rights violations and international treaty violations? Or were they naive enough to think, well, you know, if we if we give them, you know, their right to roll this territory the way they want? Well, fine, like we're going to lose the tax revenue, but they're just going to focus on setting up farms and mines and factories and logging industries and things of that nature. Did they know ahead of time what they were inviting into the country.
Jason Tower 1:03:14
I think they knew exactly what they were inviting into the country. I mean, if you look at the relationships here, let's take the Leo family clan, for example. So Leo Zhang Xiang was formerly before 2009. He was the head of finance for the MMDA. His main company, the fully Light Company, after 2009 and after the MMDA was defeated, and the border guard force was set up and this so called kokang self administered zone was set up. You saw fully light become kind of the go to crony company for the military. Fully like company got contracts all over Myanmar to develop real estate, you know, in Mandalay and young gone. It got contracts to be involved in developing cross border infrastructure with China. It played a role in facilitating, actually the development of a cross border Economic Cooperation Zone between China and Myanmar. But the the leadership of the company also took roles within the USDP party. Right and so they participated politically with the military regime. You saw me online meeting regularly with members of the legal family clan, and he even recently, even during the height of this pig butchering crisis, he gave the highest possible honors given by the Myanmar army to anyone to both the patriarch of that clan, Leona Shang, as well as Leo Jong T, who is his brother and who is the CEO of the fully like company, the fully light company owns about a fourth of the casinos up in Koh Kong, and is also responsible for roughly for a fourth of the criminal scam syndicates that are up there. I think given the close proximity between the military leadership and this fully Light Company, that there's no way that the Myanmar military and even being online would not know what he's involved in. Then I guess if you take another example of this of the Korean border guard, force and Chip do so actually, I mean, when when chip foo brought in this yacht, Thai IHG company, to build out the Shea cocoa, crime city, you know, kind of between 2017 and 2020. This was done really without any reference to Myanmar zone laws. And for that reason, at the time, the NLD government decided to make this an issue. And they decided to make it an issue with the Chinese government, because at the time, should do and this Yatta HD company, or presenting this project as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative. I think in many ways, what they were trying to do was to get the Myanmar government to try to come around and support this and to voice that they wanted the Chinese side to make this a part of China's Belt and Road Initiative. But after the NLD, government started to look at what was happening more closely, and after I got more information on some of the developments there and how they were violating the national level laws, the NLD racist with the Chinese side, it pushed back it even threatened to pull back from some of the agreements around VRI unless China clarified on whether this project was meant to be a part of that VRI plan. And then the end, China decided to distance itself from the project, it came out openly saying no, this is not part of the Belton Road initiative. And then the NLD government turned around and tried to do something to regulate the area. But it couldn't because it was under the control of the military. So that's what it did next. I mean, towards the end of 2020, you saw the NLD, government began putting pressure on the military demanding that the military give it access to the area to investigate. And then the military ultimately went about this process of trying to go in and regulating the area itself. So towards the end of 2020, you saw the military go in and talk with Chip do about this, this this this very large, unregulated on unapproved casino city that he had built in the Korean border areas with someone who was unknown Chinese criminal, someone who had an arrest warrant out from 2014. For his arrest in China. This this individual soldiers on the border guard force, though, refused even to listen to the military in terms of cracking down on this. And then later on, you saw the border guard force threatened to quit, because I guess from the vantage point of the border guard force, the reason it became a border guard force was because it wanted protection from the military to be able to engage in projects just like this. So after that happened, you saw the Myanmar military walk things back a bit. And then of course, you had the military coup on February 1 2021. And then just days after the coup, you saw new life breathed into the border guard force criminal operations in current state, which started to expand dramatically following the toppling of the NLD. Government. And I think that that's another key point to highlight here is that it was after the coup, that really, you started to see a very large expansion of a lot of these criminal zones in the Quranic areas under the Myanmar army, basically, the Myanmar army had no longer any reason to push back against any of this activity. And I think it's very clear it knew what was going on. Because the military had also been informed by the NLD government of what was going on the military. I've been pressured by the NLD government and even to some extent by China to try to do something about this. And rather than doing something about the coup, and instead allowed the current border guard force to continue expanding all this illicit activity, probably also taking in quite a lot of the proceeds and revenues from it, although it's difficult to see exactly where all of these illicit proceeds are going.
Brad 1:09:36
And so, I'm glad I'm glad you've pivoted to China because it has a very interesting relationship with these organizations. On the one hand, you know, China's foreign power, you know, claims that he doesn't get involved in the internal affairs of other countries, all that sort of stuff. And we look at Myanmar is okay, well, Myanmar is a country where you've got lots and lots of different ethnic armies and all that and I'm, we've had guests on who have spoken quite sternly about the issue of people overestimating the relationship that these ethnic armed organizations have with China and of just dismissing these organizations as being puppets of China. While on the other hand, we look at certain ethnic armed organizations, I'm thinking of the United wants state Army, for example, where everything seems to be done in Chinese where the operating language seems to be in Chinese and where the Chinese government seems to have a surprising level of oversight of these organizations, I think most people would agree that many Aeos, particularly in the north and northeast of the country, have close ties to China. And yet, China seems to be very straightforward, not not duplicitous at all. In this particular matter of the scam centers are a problem. We want them to be shut down because they are a targeting our citizens, and be there enslaving our citizens. So how is that relationship playing out now with China versus the CEOs that have been tacitly or overtly supporting these criminal syndicates?
Jason Tower 1:11:09
Yeah, I mean, I think looking at the history of China's involvement with some of these developments is also quite interesting, right? Because, you know, how did you ultimately get here, particularly in Myanmar, I mean, it was a decade or more of China really just taking no action on this issue, or looking the other way, or even many parts of the Chinese state or, you know, quasi Chinese governmental agencies or party agencies, even having some level of involvement with the criminal groups that were building out these casino cities and use infrastructure, particularly down in the Korean areas. So if you go back to the history of this Sri Coco Yachty, new city project that I talked about a bit, and look at how it was ultimately developed, I mean, the contract went to a state owned enterprise, a Chinese state owned enterprise, a 300 million plus dollar contract went to one of these Chinese SOEs, to build the initial infrastructure for that project. And then there was a Chinese planning body, the think tank of the main Chinese planning body that's been involved in the high level negotiations and planning around the shiny Myanmar economic corridor that was brought in by the Thai New City company to do high level planning for that project. Right. This is the think tank of the national reform and Development Commission of China. So you had a lot of Chinese involvement in building the the infrastructure and ultimately, in in supporting kind of the development of some of the precursors of the scam syndicates, you know, with the initial development of these casinos, cities, kind of over the past decade plus in in Myanmar, before, you know, we hit this current crisis. And I think the interesting thing to look at is why did China wait until the problems got this bad to start cracking down? Well, in some senses, I mean, if we look at another very prominent, one of these criminal zones, that has emerged in the region in Laos, in the Golden Triangle, Special Economic Zone area, there, you saw where illicit Chinese actors had actually successfully co opted the LAO government into the scheme to build a massive casino city, which can host all sorts of illicit activity, and got the LAO side to voice positive things about that particular project to the Chinese government, ultimately leading China to give some level of support to that I mean, to you know, collaborate with the Golden Triangle sec to, you know, kind of present zhaowei, the chair of this golden triangle special economic zone that's been set up in Laos, who has a 99 year contract with the local government that more or less makes him in charge of that particular territory. You know, the that model was actually quite successful. So I think looking at this, this is probably what some of the criminal groups that were going into Myanmar were trying to achieve. They basically wanted to take that model that John Elway had, you know, pioneered in the building of this vast crime city in Laos. They wanted to move that into the Myanmar border areas, but but they failed to some extent because they couldn't successfully co opt the NLD government into that. Of course, if you turn then to the China border area, I mean, in Wall Street, for example, again, China kind of looked the other way. As for the past, you know, two decades the wall have built all of these maps So casino complexes, and particularly since 2019, kind of in some of the areas where there's been a major crackdown recently, you saw major players in the Chinese underworld kind of come in, you know, make investments in these new casino cities that were being built in places like men park or men boy and Chinese are among was another one of the areas where you've seen these new casino cities built in and last day, but just as you saw in Qur'an and in kokang and and other places in wha what were initially maybe purposed as spaces for online illegal gambling, and you know, casino based fraud, gradually turned into these pig butchering operations and scam syndicates. And I think it was probably really only after China opened up its doors after the pandemic, where things started to shift in terms of China's posture towards all of this. I mean, granted, China had been cracking down for quite a few years on capital outflows and trying also to prevent its nationals from going in and going overseas and joining one of these online casino operators. So you did see sort of a lot of efforts on the Chinese government to prevent its nationals from going into Southeast Asia and taking up jobs in some of these online casino operations. But people still found a way to do that. I mean, regardless, but you did see China kind of intermittently cracking down on these things and trying to deal with capital outflows. But after they started, large scale trafficking, not only of Chinese nationals, but of nationals from all around the world. I think China really started to see where it had a major problem on its hand, because you started to see really the international community began mobilizing a bit around this right. I mean, you saw ASEAN, began raising concerns because nationals from every single ASEAN country were being trafficked into these scam syndicates. And it was impossible for countries like Malaysia or Indonesia to get their nationals back. I mean, once you were trafficked into the scam Syndicate, that was pretty much it, it was extremely difficult to identify people where people were being taken and, you know, to find these people and to rescue them out of the scam syndicates. And so pressure started to mount. And then as you know, people from further and further away started being trafficked. I mean, in May of of this year, the FBI put out a warning in the United States about the possibility of Americans being trafficked into the scam syndicates in Southeast Asia. And then you saw Interpol put out an alert, basically alarming police around the world to be vigilant about this issue, and to keep an eye out for these fraudulent advertisements and these trafficking operations that were basically targeting a global population at that point. And so a lot of this went back to China, because the criminal actors behind this that were involved in this trafficking and involved in this form of scamming, you know, their Chinese, their Chinese criminal groups. And so that pressure started to mount. Of course, I think Chinese nationals were spared from a lot of this before. China reopened its borders in January of this year. But after China reopened the borders, this came back with a vengeance, I think, really to haunt the Chinese side, because you've seen literally since January of 20 2310s, of 1000s of people being pulled into this sector, often through the same sorts of treachery that you've seen targeted at people from other countries. So, you know, Chinese nationals being tricked into taking jobs in Southeast Asia, which turned out not to be what was advertised, right? Someone takes a job in a tech Park and May saw it and then it turns out, they're, you know, schlepped across the border and never to be heard from again. Then you also had a lot of students that were tracked, there's been actually a number of students who thought they were getting jobs or internships or even joining some kind of educational programs, and Myanmar, who later ended up being trafficked into these scam syndicates as well. And even Chinese elites, right. So there's a very prominent case that has been featured quite a bit on Chinese media and social media about a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who was tricked into one of these scam centers and was held there as forced labor for over a year before finally being rescued. So, you know, I think the pressure on China's started to mount as more of more of its nationals were tricked into these scam syndicates. The Chinese public also started to cry out and you saw China's posture really shift quite remarked A couple of I think by about May of this year, about the same time that you saw Interpol and the FBI put out these notices. That's about the time when you saw China really begin to shift its posture here and to start putting active pressure on the Myanmar military on this issue, and also to put more and more pressure on other countries in the region who were hosting or actively playing a role in these criminal syndicates.
Brad 1:20:28
So it's a very murky thing. This is, it's just a little bit confusing to me. Although I suppose territorial sovereignties is always going to play this way. But why is this happening? Like? Presumably, this is not one of those cases where we're hiring unskilled laborers, like when we look at the slavery that exists within the Arab Gulf, for example, in most of those cases, it seems to be that you're hiring unskilled labor from from communities that are very impoverished. And even if they know the conditions are going to be atrocious, they still feel that it's a better alternative than staying where they are and having nothing. When we look at the sex trafficking that happens in Europe, again, you tend to go to places well, before the war, you know, Ukraine, Russia, countries like this, where compared to the Western European standard, people are very much impoverished. And then not as aware of these types of scams happening. But it seems that in this particular case, we're looking for people who are educated, who have technical know how and expertise, who have the ability to write and speak professionally enough to convince you not necessarily just to fall in love with them, but to convince you to make major investments into into some sort of technological platform. So the first question is, how is it so possible to find people who who meet the requirements of what you're looking for to work in these types of scam senators, who are also not going to be suspicious of what's going on? The second part of the question is, why is it so difficult for state actors to get their people back? We're not talking about one or two people who have been trafficked? And who are well, they're off the radar, how are we going to find one person who has been abducted and taken across the border? It's tragic. But those people are very difficult to identify. But we're talking about literally hundreds of 1000s of people. Surely we know who they are. Surely we know where they are. I know that you've previously even indicated to me that these people had mobile phones, like their own mobile phones, when they cross the border, like, can they not call for help? Can they not ask for government intervention? Like, it's boggles my mind that we can have so many people, we know who they are? We know where they are. We know that they're in trouble. And they've been illegally trafficked. And yet, we can't extract them. Can you shed light on this? Yeah,
Jason Tower 1:22:59
no, I mean, I think on on your first question, you know, how is it possible to identify these people, you're seeing entire websites being set up for what are basically companies that don't even exist. So to give an example of this, one company that trafficked quite a few people from South Asia. It's a company called how Thai they had a whole website that actually had pictures of a tech Park and may sots. It talked about, you know, the nature of the company as a leading developer of FinTech and blockchain solutions in Southeast Asia. It had, you know, pictures of a management team pictures of staff, it looked like a real company, right. And so some of the people that were tricked by this particular entity. I mean, what they revealed was they went through several rounds of interviews, they thought they were applying for a position as a code writer, or as a software developer, or as a FinTech developer, right. I mean, they thought that, that that was the position that they were applying for. And they went through processes of competing for a job. And so I mean, just it never, I think, even entered their imagination that this might be anything other than, you know, a legitimate tech company based in in Thailand. And so you had all these South Asians who ultimately came around and accepted the job. And of course, what the interview process did was check their English language skills and check to see if they had basic computer skills. It had already sorted through quite a lot of potential applicants for what appeared to be a quite lucrative job. I mean, wages in the range of maybe 1500 up to 5000 or more dollars for these positions that were being offered plus, you know, plane tickets and promises of room and board and bonuses and benefits and other things. And, you know, so that's how they're, they're trafficking these people. I mean, they're presenting themselves as legitimate recruitment businesses or as leading tech businesses, sometimes they're presenting themselves as casinos. And they're looking to hire, you know, a dealer inside of a casino, or they're looking to hire a chef. I mean, you've got all sorts of people that are being targeted. But, you know, it's the the process of going through what appears to be a legitimate hiring process that allows these traffickers to make sure that they're getting the right people, then I guess, when it comes to the second question of why it's so difficult to get these people out? Well, this is, you know, really the the very dark underbelly of this whole problem set in that the criminal actors have specifically identified places like Myanmar, where you have, you know, fragmented sovereignty or where you have these border guard force entities that more or less have a mandate from the Myanmar military to engage in any form of illicit activity that they want to, and where it's extremely difficult. I mean, once someone enters into one of these compounds in Hawaii, given sort of circumstances now in Myanmar, where there is no local law enforcement any longer where you don't have a responsible government any longer I mean, the Myanmar military junta regime, it could care less about victims of human trafficking, it's focusing all of its efforts on oppressing the Myanmar people and trying to pound the people into accepting it as as as government and you know, fighting insurgencies and our revolution really all across the entire country. And so, you know, when it comes to individuals who are brought into these areas, I mean, it's not clear who you contact in Myanmar, if you want to try to rescue someone. And then if you were to try to go into those areas to bring someone out, I mean, you're dealing with a very well armed border guard force that has many layers of security. And then inside of the compounds, you know, the the criminal groups who are operating the scam syndicates in there, they've brought in their own security, right. And there are also Chinese crime groups, including I mentioned before a broken tooth and one called coin, who operates a network of security companies across the region that also are providing security to these compounds. Right. And so that's another element of the of this whole issue is that there's just many layers of armed actors that prevent anyone from going into or coming out of the compounds. So this is why you know, places like Myanmar, this problem is extremely difficult to deal with.
Brad 1:27:46
And so you mentioned these these armed guards that correct me if I'm wrong, but there was an incident not that long ago, where these armed guards actually opened fire on people trying to escape one of these facilities.
Jason Tower 1:27:55
That's right. And in fact, I think one of the proximate reasons of why you suddenly saw the Brotherhood Alliance, leverage the issue of the scam compounds and scam centers in northern Myanmar to launch Operation 1027, which is now turned into a nationwide operation to unseat the Myanmar military. It was related to this incident that happened on October 20, where basically, border guard force personnel and police opened fire in one of these compounds in a particular part of kokang, that's called sure you Enza, which is under the control of a border guard force leader named Misha Tom. And, you know, there was a scam compound there that had about 300 people in it. And on that day, in October, October 20th. Quite a few of these people attempted to escape when the compound owner was on the verge of trying to transfer some of them to a neighboring compound. And, you know, after these individuals fled, basically, orders were given to open fire. And you saw anywhere from 60 to 100 people, mostly Chinese nationals just just massacred in this incident that happened on that day. And so this sort of goes to show you the dangers of being in one of these compounds. I mean, from the vantage point of the criminal syndicates, the last thing in the world, they want us for someone to exit because if someone does exit, they're going to have information and intelligence about who's in the compound about who's responsible for this and that might end up getting in the hands of, you know, law enforcement or someone who might try to do something about the scam compounds. So, you know, we've seen a lot of incidences like this where individuals who've tried to escape have either been seriously hurt or killed by the cops pound owners or by the scam syndicates.
Brad 1:30:02
And so it's just a mind bogglingly the large and cruel industry. And so I think that the question that has to be posed here in the in the current context is, what is the relationship between this industry and the ancillary black market industries and the ongoing coup, because the same ethnic armed organizations that may or may not be allied to the military or may or may not be allied to the democratic movement are also engaged in this intensely inhumane vicious industry? What like, what what are we? What's gonna happen? What's the future here? Like? Are these organizations hoping that they can eliminate this industry or the organizations that are making money off these industry currently fighting in the hopes that whoever wins is going to allow them to continue operating these industries? Like, what role does this have to play in the in the broader context of the revolution?
Jason Tower 1:31:09
Well, I mean, panning out a little bit. First of all, I mean, there's still very low awareness of these pig butchering scams around the globe, right? I mean, maybe there's a little bit more awareness now in China, because China was getting hit by these pig butchering scams earlier than other countries. But you still have many places around the globe that have yet to experience these types of pig butchering scams. So as long as awareness is low, and as long as these things are highly profitable, I mean, in a lot of cases, you know, one victim is going to net 200,000 500,000 A million dollars or more. And so, you know, there's a lot of room for these criminal actors to continue perpetrating this activity, provided that they can find a space from which they're able to do it. And I think, you know, the military coup of 2021, it created perfect conditions in Myanmar for this type of activity, right? I mean, no law enforcement, many countries no longer really doing business with the Myanmar military. So no point of contact when someone has traffic to try to get them out. And then really no responsible government actor in the country to try to deal with illicit activity that is happening and other places, right. And, you know, for groups like the UW USA, as they see the cocagne border guard force, you know, sort of really ramping up all this activity and chiptunes border guard force ramping up all of this activity, they're also going to see, wow, why don't we cash in as well and pull in massive amounts of revenue from these scams. And so it leads to something of a vicious cycle where, you know, many of these groups get involved more and more, and what is a very lucrative, illicit and very tragic industry. And, you know, now I think what has happened is really quite remarkable. Because, you know, with all of this recent, I think, growing awareness internationally of these problems, and with some of the pressures and challenges that China is now facing, China has started to become quite vocal with the military regime about this issue. And really, from May of this year, when the Chinese foreign minister went in and told me on lie, that's, you know, the Chinese side demands that Myanmar crack down on this and told me a lie that the Chinese people detest this, that's a pretty clear signal of an intent of on the side of China to start seeing a crackdown on on these excesses. And, you know, I think they're probably frustration built on the part of China when months and months went by, with there being no crackdown, and we're basically instead of a crackdown, you saw the Myanmar military push back, right, you had representatives of the military's State Administrative Council go on TV, claiming that this wasn't a problem, you know, criticizing foreign media for, you know, over overblow or over emphasizing or exaggerating this issue, right. I mean, there was just no sense at all that there was any political will to crack down. And so I think you then saw China start to take unilateral steps to do something about this and began detaining some of the leaders of the United State army detained the commander, the Deputy Commander in Chief of the UWS, a Belgian phone. It detained 11 of the kokang elites that are involved, including some active representatives of the kokang SAIC who probably in the eyes of the Myanmar military would be seen as you know, officials officials of the Myanmar army regime. So China you know, detain these people in unilateral And after that happened, you suddenly saw were in the water territories. The UWS a really started to follow tight his lead, it opened up doors and a lot of these compounds that sense first couple 100, then over 1000 back. And you then saw China take another step of issuing arrest warrants for two key wall leaders who were deeply involved in actually operating a couple of these scam centers. And that led to a pretty remarkable turn of events where just 1000s of people were released from the Centers and the law, even, you know, kind of, I think in deference to the Chinese arrest warrants and demands, they strip these to wall leaders, the wah Minister of construction and the wall mayor of Hmong County, which a lot of these scam syndicates were based in it stripped them have all of their official positions, also publicly disgracing them and acknowledging that you know what China said in the arrest warrants was true. But you know, despite the law doing all of this, you still didn't see by early October, any efforts on the part of the Myanmar military at a crackdown, if anything, and this is just really ridiculous to think about it, but rather than, you know, deploying the kokang BGF police to crackdown on crime. Instead, what happened in the CO Kong territories was the BGF. Police started this street sweeping campaign, they went around cleaning up the streets rather than doing anything to crack down on the estimated 20,000 people that were held inside of the scam compounds in ko calm. And then, of course, the massacre happened on the 20th, which is probably the last straw here, you know, from the vantage point of the Chinese government side. And that's when you saw the Brotherhood come out with this pretty remarkable announcement about how it was launching this operation to eradicate the scam syndicates and the Myanmar military dictatorship in a single blow. And since then what's happened is really quite remarkable. I mean, you've seen the Brotherhood go in and take over major towns and territories. You've seen these scam compounds in kokang start to empty out, you've seen in musei, unless you also scam compounds liberated and, you know, parts of townships and around them also fall to the Brotherhood. So this is something that I think has become kind of very central to the armed resistance movement insofar as you're seeing elements of the resistant movement that are in China's sphere of influence, who really were under a lot of pressure from China to go and negotiate with the Myanmar military before May, you know, over the last couple of months, as the Myanmar military has failed to pay any attention to this issue, that pressure from China has gradually started to disappear. And now it seems like they've been able to quite successfully find space to go forward with some of their political objectives by assisting by helping to try to resolve some of the just really awful things that are happening with these camps and tickets. And, you know, now I think there's there's numbers that are floating out there that in the neighborhood of that that's 30,000 have been released since China began detaining people in the wine kokang territories at the beginning of October. So you're talking about roughly two months, very large number of people that have managed to be freed from these compounds. But there are still many more that are that are trapped within them. And I think, you know, now you're you're maybe seeing some signs of hope that there are ways of dealing with this problem. But like, what's significant years, it's required a major military operation to deal with it, right.
Brad 1:38:58
So there are a couple of like quickfire questions that I need to get some clarification on. First of all, when you said the kokang operated like they ran a street sweeping operation, what exactly do you mean by that?
Jason Tower 1:39:09
What I mean, is that police fraud, this is the Occoquan border guard force police, they went out and uniform with brooms, and they swept the streets. That was kind of at the height of the crackdown in law. You know, you would have thought that there'd be a similar crackdown, that, you know, kind of the Myanmar military would read between the lines and recognize that what China was doing, visa vie the law was a signal that it meant business. I mean, there's a saying in Chinese that you kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Well, in this case, you know, the monkey just completely ignored. The chicken being killed and it wasn't around business as normal, you know, deploying the police to do engage in sort of meaningless activities rather than doing anything to crack down on all these scams syndicates.
Brad 1:39:59
I thought you were speaking euphemistically that they went out and they focused on cleaning up petty crime from the streets rather than going up. But you mean they, they took brooms, and they cleaned rubbish off the streets? That's
Jason Tower 1:40:13
exactly what they did. Right? And, of course, this is right on China's doorstep. And I'm sure the Chinese side saw that, and we're probably scratching their heads thinking, you know, doesn't make online not understand what we're trying to communicate here. You know, did you not see that we've detained these people and sort of what's gone down in wall state? It must have been very puzzling and perplexing to see such a response.
Brad 1:40:36
And the second thing is, you us keep saying China detain these people. So I need to wrap my head around that one as well. Are you saying that the Chinese the actual agents of the Chinese government, in Myanmar, sovereign territory, detained people? Oh,
Jason Tower 1:40:53
no, actually, these individuals crossed the border into China. What happened in that case is that you every year, you'll have a folk song festival and a cross border marathon up in the town of Zhang calm, which is a small town that's adjacent to the Koh Kong territory. And it would be very normal for the local government there to invite some of the CO Kong elites people like the CEO of the fully Light Company. You know, people like some of the leaders of the border guard force or the SAIC. It's very normal to invite them to go across the border and participate in these activities, maybe to get the speech there or to be on hand as so called dignitaries. Well, what happened at the event this year is that the Kunming police were there waiting for them and arrested 11 of them when they came across the border. You've seen subsequently that the Chinese police have released confession videos from three of these individuals, including the CEO of the fully Light Company, Leo Zhang Qi who continues to be in detention in China.
Brad 1:42:04
Okay, so it's okay, so I was thinking something far more far more extreme than that. And so with the Quran, this is another thing because we're talking about, I believe the kokang are a part of the Brotherhood Alliance. Is that correct?
Jason Tower 1:42:17
So the MMDA yes, they're part of the Brotherhood Alliance along with the tnla and the American army.
Brad 1:42:27
Right. So so it is not in fact, the MNDA who are profiting from these it is the kokang border guard force who are profiting from scams. And it's correct. That's right.
Jason Tower 1:42:36
I mean, the entire kokang territory until very recently has been under the control of the cocagne border guard force. And in particular, there are five key families that control all of the compounds in which this very nefarious activity is taking place. They're probably the biggest beneficiaries of all of this. Okay,
Brad 1:42:59
okay. So it's okay. So it's not that we've suddenly seen the kokang Previously, you know, profiting from from these industries, and then turning around and suddenly saying, No, we're going to eradicate it. It's, it's the people who are in the Brotherhood Alliance or not now, nor have they ever been profiting from this industry, correct? Well,
Jason Tower 1:43:17
I mean, I guess if you look at the Brotherhood Alliance, I mean, they all have their own political objectives. They all have their own models for generating income. And, you know, there could be elements of those models that do include some form of illicit business, I think that that tends to be generally the case with insurgencies across the board is that they need to find large amounts of revenue in order to fund themselves in order to identify arms. And, you know, hopefully, over time, particularly if they're able to take control of territory, they'll be increasingly shifting towards more licit sources of revenue. But, you know, I guess in case in the case of the, the MMDA, they were really largely in the jungle. I mean, before, very recently, they had a couple of small base camps. They had some presence in the Milan territory. This is the National Democratic Alliance army, because of intermarriage between the leaders of the MMDA in the NDAA, that kind of gave those two groups a very close relationship and then allowed them to kind of use space and territory that one another provided and then also the KE the kitchen have been another group that has provided some support to you know, it's brother and sister groups that also represent members of the broader political grouping that all three of the members of the Brotherhood are a part of the FPN CC's right. So, I mean, you have kind of a sharing of resources. And across all of these different groups that are there in, in Myanmar. And I guess what's what's fascinating about this, to me is of course, the MMDA. Since it publicly reemerged in 2015, it had kind of gone dark after 2009 When punk Josh young US troops were defeated. You didn't really hear much about the MMDA from 2009 Up until 2015. When it reemerged in it made its first attempt to fight what it would refer to as the battle to go home. It was not successful. It's subsequently tried again, a couple more times since 2015. But this time, you've seen them adopt a very different approach. And I think you've really seen all of these armed groups, the Brotherhood, in particular, adopt quite a different approach since the military coup, where you know, for example, in the case of the MMDA they're they're they're very quickly rebranding themselves right. I mean, the MMDA is shifting from being just a Chinese speaking you know, kokang ethnic armed organization with a very narrow objective of recovering the Koh Kong territory, into a group which is now very active in supporting people's Defence Forces, which is building its own multilingual brigade, this brigade 611 That it's trained and developed since the coup which is Braemar speaking in which involves a lot of Myanmar youth, SHAN youths, people of many different backgrounds from all across the country. And you're seeing the NMDA kind of take on more of an inclusive narrative about itself, you're also seeing the MMDA become very vocal about the objective of taking down military dictatorship. And then also, it's become quite vocal, really over the last couple of months about the Myanmar military's involvement in drugs, the Myanmar military's involvement in the scam centers in illicit gambling and other things. And you saw kind of in the weeks leading up to 1027, where the MMDA started publicly referring to the Myanmar military, not as the Myanmar military coup regime, which had started to use that language a few months after the coup, but now as being onlines drug army, and that's actually how the main the MMDA started, you know, describing the Myanmar army a few weeks before this operation was launched. And then so, you know, the operation itself, and this is something that the Brotherhood did jointly, it was announced with two objectives. One was crackdown on the scam centers, you know, sort of instrumentalizing I guess the Myanmar military's governance failure. Okay, well, you failed. Now it's time for the Brotherhood to give this a try. Let's see if we can kind of come in and deal with this issue. And then secondly, taking down the military dictatorship. So in that regard, you've kind of seen the Brotherhood align itself much more with the spring revolution in terms of its objective in announcing this operation turned 27.
Brad 1:48:21
Wow, that's incredible. So so the tide is definitely turning. What do you what do you think is the future here? Do you anticipate that a democratic success in Myanmar is going to lead to the eradication of the centers? Or? Or is your organization or other organizations preparing for alternative approaches, assuming that the areas in which these scam centers currently operate are not going to be fully liberated from the powerful armed groups that that currently profit from them? What's the what's the plan for the future with regards to these?
Jason Tower 1:48:58
Well, I think what's fascinating here about what has happened since Operation 1027, is that one, you've seen the brotherhood and align PDFs be remarkably successful. Right? I mean, they've taken over now over 150 posts, the MMDA, more or less, has Lau kind surrounded, it's taken four major border crossings with China. It now has MMDA flags running over townships like chin saw. And it's on the verge of I think really being able to go into alkine and liberate a lot more of these scam syndicate centers. Now, of course, at the same time, you've seen the Chinese government use the leverage that the operation and that the Brotherhood has, has given it over the military. I mean, it should now be very clear to the Myanmar military have the intention here of cracking down on these criminal syndicates. And interestingly, what you've seen happen And is that Ming online, you know, once he has been brought to his knees, is actually now actively involved in tearing down the very border guard force that He Himself created. Right. So not long after this operation, the Chinese side issued arrest warrants for Misha Tang, and three other members of the Ming family, noting that already one of the members of that family, this is make sure as Han son in law is in custody and China and has issued one of these confession videos. But Meng is the one who is responsible again for that that massacre. After the Chinese side issued this arrest warrant, it was actually the military regime itself, which went in and arrested these individuals. And according to what the MMDA says it was the military that executed make sure it's haram. Of course, the official statement that the military has put out on this is that he committed suicide as the Myanmar military was trying to go in and capture him. But you've also seen the Myanmar military replace the head of the kokang SAIC with directly with a military officer and take over the leadership and management directly of that, of that of that territory. So, effectively speaking here. I mean, what the operation has done, and what the Chinese pressure has done is it's forced the Myanmar army to take down its own border guard force in Koh Kong. And, of course, the battle there is not over, right. I mean, it's it's said that the founder of the border guard force by SWAT Chun is still at this time, on December 1, President and CO Kong and that he has roughly 2000 troops there that are protecting what remains of some of the scam syndicates and protecting kind of the position of the border guard force and of the Myanmar military. They're inside of the kokang territory. But you have started now to see the military, you know, go after its own border guard force and deal with some of these issues. Of course, it's yet to do this in Korean. And I think that opens up a very interesting set of questions in that you have all of these crime cities that are there in the current areas under the control of the Korean border guard force right there next to the can LA and many other PDFs. And what will happen there. I mean, is is the border guard force and Corinne now feeling nervous because it no longer has a security guarantee, or a credible security guarantee from the military. You know, the military has actually gone after its border guard force in Koh Kong. Will the the current border guard force think of defecting? Let's think of reforming will think of opening up the doors of these compounds and cutting off the relationships with these criminal groups? It raises a lot of questions. Right. But I mean, I think again, getting back to the the main issue here is you still have a lot of groups in Myanmar that are enabling this criminal activity. And this criminal activity is highly lucrative and the scam syndicates are sitting on billions of dollars that if they're not co opting different armed groups in Myanmar or the Myanmar military, they're going to try to co opt other groups elsewhere, right? They're going to go to Laos, they're going to go back to Cambodia, they're going to target other countries around the world. And this is a major security threat that really extending beyond Myanmar, we need to look at in many settings. And, you know, I guess one hope is that if, you know, kind of in the future, if there is success in bringing down the military and pushing the military out of politics and reforming the military, and, you know, moving in the direction of democracy in Myanmar, and good governance in Myanmar, that might, you know, be an example that other countries would want to look at carefully. I mean, look at sort of just how horrific. All of this has been for the country, how many people have been harmed by it? I mean, is it wise to do business with these criminal syndicates given? You know, what was the lesson learned for the Myanmar military here?
Brad 1:54:17
Fair enough. So I think it will come back at some point and we will look at specific cases. But for today, we might want to pause here so we don't go too long. However, we do have a custom where we like to end the episode by giving the guests the space to just share some thoughts that they would like the audience to mull over as they go on about their day or, or something that you you really want to emphasize for people to take away with them. So before we finish up, I just like to invite you to, to share some thoughts.
Jason Tower 1:54:53
Yeah, no, I mean, I think we have been talking about a lot of issues relevant to you know, seven, eight years of conference Acton Myanmar relevant to the current situation where you've seen these transnational criminal groups exploit the dire circumstances that the country is now in following the the military coup and where you've seen the Myanmar army itself be a major enabler of all of this criminal activity. I guess a lot of people may be thinking, Well, how is this relevant? You know, for me, and I think what's important to point to here is that we're facing now a global crisis around these pig butchering scams, you know, this is really, I would refer to it as the global pig butchering crisis, where these criminal syndicates are trafficking labor from around the world, you know, really anyone at this point in time could now become a victim of trafficking, or be trafficked into a country like Myanmar, that's something we really have never seen in. In history. I mean, Myanmar has never been before a destination country for human trafficking, it's usually gone in the other direction. And then at the same time, these scams are, are very lethal, and they're very destructive. And they're very precise. And you're seeing many people around the world falling prey to these scams, you know, just simply by making friends with people on on social media applications or on online dating sites. And so this is really something that needs a very strong response globally, of course, now you're seeing a response kind of in the China Myanmar border area, and this issue of scamming has kind of, you know, kind of become quite central, really to the military conflict that's now going on up in northern Shan states and in that part of, of Myanmar, but, you know, I think panning out to sort of some of the implications of this more more broadly, I mean, now is really the time for law enforcement and for, you know, private sector companies that are being exploited by these criminal groups, and, you know, watchdog groups that are looking at crime and money laundering, and where all these illicit assets are going. And we're and media groups and groups involved in prevention of human trafficking, all of these actors really need to start coming together and looking for ways to combat this crisis to really make sure that on one hand, no country around the world is going to accept the presence of these types of criminal scam groups using forced labor. And then on the other side of the things that we're going to have to be looking at solutions to shut down all of these different scams, whether that's, you know, by just doing dramatic amounts of awareness raising or whether that's by putting in place new oversight and regulations on cryptocurrency, given that a lot of these scams are happening in crypto, or, you know, they're they're exploiting people's lack of knowledge of crypto or exploiting fraudulent crypto applications. But the point here is, is we've got a major global crisis on our hands that extends way beyond Myanmar. And many people in Myanmar are being victimized by this. This is sort of something that's playing a role in violent conflict in Myanmar. But it's also something that's touching people and harming people all around the world. And I think that's kind of the key point that I'd really like to emphasize in closing here.
Host 1:58:41
Many listeners know that in addition to running these podcast episodes, we also run a nonprofit, that or Burma, which carries out humanitarian projects across Myanmar. While we regularly post about current needs and proposals from groups on the ground, we also handle emergency requests, often in matters that are quite literally life or death. When those urgent requests come in, we have no time to conduct targeted fundraisers as these funds are often needed within hours. So please consider helping us to maintain this emergency fund. We want to stress that literally any amount you can give allows us to respond more flexibly and effectively when disaster strikes. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form of currency or transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian immediate missions, aiding those local communities who post donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement CVM families of deceased victims, internally displaced person IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries education initiatives. The purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies COVID relief and more We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by a nonprofit mission that are Burma. And your donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fun. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites except credit card. You can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/better Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon Venmo, GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info at better burma.org. That's better Burma. One word, spelled b e t t e r b u r m a.org. If you'd like to give him another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artists and communities across Myanmar. Available at alokacrafts.com. Any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission. That's a local crafts, spelled A L O K A C R A F T S one word alokacrafts.com Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.