Cyber slavery – a form of organised crime that refers to the practice of exploiting individuals through digital means for labour or other purposes, often under coercive or deceptive conditions has become a growing threat for South Asia.
Attracted by the allure of seemingly promising employment opportunities abroad, many people are trafficked to South Asian countries such as Cambodia and Thailand. Here, they often find themselves confined to scam operations, with their freedom and well-being severely compromised, the Global Press Journal reports.
Faysal, a 26-year-old Bangladeshi, had worked for years in Dubai as a graphics designer and briefly in a restaurant kitchen after he lost his job during Covid-19.
Down on his luck, he accepted a high-paying job in Thailand from a trusted friend – or so he believed.
The offer was perfect: more money and the promise of a better life. Plus, he says, recruiters told him that they would bear the costs of visa processing and flights.
Shortly after he arrived, reality set in. He was tortured and forced to work under inhumane conditions.
Like Faysal, youth from several countries, including Bangladesh, are being targeted by regional traffickers to expand their illicit networks.
Faysal is among more than 220,000 people believed to have been trafficked into cybercrime hubs in remote areas of Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand.
Under armed guards, these individuals are forced to perpetrate crypto and romance scams, fueling a hidden, multibillion-dollar global cyber slavery industry.
Those trafficked into these cyber slavery rings tend to be young, have some English-language skills, and come from countries with few job opportunities.
This leaves people from low-income countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines especially vulnerable to being trafficked into cyber slavery centres.
In many Asian countries, remittances make up a large percentage of the gross domestic product (5% in Bangladesh, 9% in the Philippines and 25% in Nepal).
Citizens often move abroad to pursue low- or semi-skilled work in the construction industry, or as drivers or domestic help. The opportunity to work in an office in the technology sector can seem too good to be true.
Modern-day slavery raking in the billions
Cyber slavery is a relatively new phenomenon. Stories from people who were rescued or escaped reveal accounts of physical abuse, inhumane work conditions, entrapment and other human rights violations.
Asia, long a hub for call-centre scams, is the global engine of these crimes, a source of both revenue and labour, according to a United Nations (UN) report published in April.
As Asia's digital transformation accelerated after Covid-19, so did the scams.
Just this February, an armed group in Myanmar rescued 260 people from 19 countries who were trapped in industrial-scale scam centers.
Regional Coordinator on Asian human trafficking at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime Rebecca Miller told the Global Press Journal, "Transnational organised crime, particularly in Southeast Asia, is evolving at a rate the region has never seen before. The growth is fuelled by new service-based models and the ability to move profits and value across borders with unmatched speed and efficiency."
The compounds where trafficked people are forced to work have mushroomed across Asia since the pandemic, transforming Chinese and Cambodian casino areas of the 1990s into cyber slavery hubs.
A 2024 report by the United States Institute of Peace estimates that cyber-scams bring in $12.5 billion in Cambodia, $15.3 billion in Myanmar and $10.9 billion in Laos — nearly 40 per cent of their combined GDP.
Now, cyber slavery compounds are even cropping up in new countries.
In the Philippines, the government has raided and taken over multiple compounds where cyber slavery and other forms of human trafficking and abuse occurred.
Those compounds are now used as detention facilities for the people who ran them as labour trafficking centres.
This isn't just a regional crisis: In 2023, US residents lost $12 billion to cyber scams, much of it linked to Southeast Asian syndicates.
While a few of the young people are abducted, most are lured voluntarily by job ads on Facebook, Instagram or messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. The ads promise salaries of $1,000–$1,500 for vague roles, like translators or customer service agents. Fake logos and staged interviews contribute to the illusion of legitimacy.
Cyber slavery rings scam workers in many of the same ways they expect their workers to later rake in money from people around the world. Deepfakes, generative AI, and machine learning help them "execute social engineering scams with alarming success rates, exploiting people's trust and emotions," according to a January 2024 UN report.
The trap is often well disguised. Prospective workers usually travel on tourist visas arranged by local agents, so their departures raise no red flags. Immigration authorities only occasionally intervene, as agents prepare legitimate paperwork and hotel bookings.
Undersecretary at the Philippines' Department of Migrant Workers, Bernard Olalia, said, "Syndicates make it easy, telling victims that they don't have to spend anything … and victims grab it without verifying anything."
With their papers in order, hopeful young workers pass through borders unnoticed.
Suspicion among family members and friends usually only arises when those who leave never return.
Last year, the Indian government announced that between January 2022 and May 2024, nearly 30,000 Indians went to Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam on visitor visas and didn't come back.
A convergence of corrupt officials and remote regions
The scam centres are mostly based in Myanmar's ungoverned territories, but they rely on bordering Thailand's infrastructure — power, telecom and finance — to operate.
The Moei River corridor, the natural border between Thailand and Myanmar, hosts at least 17 crime zones spanning 5 million square meters, according to the US Institute of Peace.
These zones flourished after Myanmar's 2021 military coup.
The compounds resemble militarised business parks, constantly patrolled by soldiers but complete with dorms, basketball courts, clinics, and salons and shops offering alcohol and sex workers.
These criminal networks have strategically placed themselves in border areas far from capital cities, places where the rule of law is weak or corruptible, and in some cases, under armed group control, says Miller of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
She said, "This is posing a distinct challenge for the governments of the region. How do you confront something that is in a place you don't control?"
BRAC Migration Program's Sector Specialist Rayhan Kabir said, "These organisations use legitimate-appearing fronts and virtual assets to mask activities from gambling to human trafficking. Corruption is rife. Administrative entities in Thailand, Myanmar and China as well as trafficking networks from Bangladesh and Dubai are all involved.
"Every link in this chain participates in the trafficking process. It's global organised crime. Police move trafficked people past immigration and then transfer them to hotels along the border. Then they're ferried across the river, where armed groups seize them," he added.
"In many places, police are corrupt," Olalia says. "Even the government officials themselves are part of the syndicate."
Escape is rare
Once inside these compounds, escape requires luck, outside help or both.
The internet's borderless nature complicates jurisdiction, enabling criminals to operate from one country while pursuing targets in another. Crimes like soliciting crypto ransom payments often fall outside traditional legal frameworks.
Bangladesh CID Additional Superintendent of Police Mostafizur Rahman said, "We can use all our power to take immediate action when it happens inside Bangladesh, but when it's an international crime or multinational parties are involved, we have to go through an appropriate channel, which takes time and makes things very challenging."
It's particularly difficult to find anyone guilty because, unlike other forms of trafficking, these workers technically consent to the jobs.
"Sometimes, when the overseas Filipino workers are caught, they are treated as violators, questioned on how they arrived in these countries in the first place," Olalia says.
Faysal helped plan a mass escape. He was recaptured but eventually freed during a joint Thailand-Myanmar military operation which rescued 92 people.
Faysal says he cannot sit still due to ligament injuries from his escape, but the memories of those sleepless nights in proverbial chains may also be a factor.
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