Panarat Thepgumpanat and Panu Wongcha-UM
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand and China will work together to crack down on fast-growing networks of illegal call centers along Thailand’s border with Myanmar and Cambodia, often staffed by traffickers who target people with phone and online scams.
Southeast Asia – particularly the border areas between Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia – has become a hotbed for telecom and other online fraud in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Thai police said on Friday that a coordination center would be set up at the national police headquarters in Bangkok, and Chinese authorities plan to set up another in Thailand’s Mae Sot district, which borders Myanmar’s Myawaddy, a major hub for fraud call centers.
“This center (in Bangkok) will work together (with China) to investigate and combat call center gangs in Myanmar, along the Myanmar-Cambodia border, which include many Chinese and Thai nationals,” Thai police said.
“The coordination center is expected to start operations in February 2025,” said the statement, which came after a meeting of Thai and Chinese security officials in Bangkok.
Public pressure has been building in Thailand for authorities to crack down on fraud compounds, where workers around the world are trapped and often mistreated.
China is also increasingly concerned, especially the abduction and cross-border rescue of Chinese actress Wang Xing from Myanmar.
On Tuesday, Chinese state media reported that China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Myanmar reached a consensus on the elimination of telecommunications centers in Myanmar during a meeting in the Chinese city of Kunming.
Recent activity in the fight against fraud centers also included a meeting this week between a Thai military delegation and the Myanmar junta’s second-in-command SOE in Naypyidaw to discuss the onslaught of human trafficking and online fraud, Myanmar state media reported.
Myanmar’s state-run Global New Light said this week that junta authorities sent 55,000 foreign nationals, including more than 53,000 Chinese, from fraud compounds to their home countries between October 2023 and January 2025.
The report also said the fraud operations received support from Myanmar’s neighboring countries, a claim that Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Vechayachai denied on Thursday.
“This issue is not just about Thailand,” Phumtham said, “this is where Myanmar and China should also help.”