Commentary: Thailand, under pressure, struggles to curb scam syndicates
Thailand is considering a 50km wall at its border with Cambodia to curb illegal crossings, but there’s doubt it will deter scam syndicates and corruption. Former foreign correspondent Nirmal Ghosh weighs in.
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SINGAPORE: A proposal by Thailand’s Defence Ministry to build a border wall near Poipet, Cambodia, is raising eyebrows.
The idea is to curb illegal border crossings and comes as Thailand tries to find ways to counter criminal scam syndicates operating across its borders in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Experts are sceptical, however, that the approximately 50km wall - which is referred to in some reports as a fence - will, if constructed, actually deter illegal activities.
On paper, the wall sounds like a tough security measure. From the US-Mexico border to India’s plan to fence its 1,643km border with Myanmar and Malaysian state Kelantan’s proposal (which was eventually rejected) for a 100km wall with Thailand’s Narathiwat province, governments are increasingly turning to physical barriers as security fix.
But there are reasons for the scepticism. ASEAN nationals - who make up a large proportion of workers in scam centres, forced or otherwise - can already travel to Cambodia visa-free. Much of the border remains laced with land mines, a natural deterrent. And while the border is porous in certain heavily forested and mountainous areas, building a fence or a wall in those areas is likely not feasible and will be riddled with flaws.
Not to mention that a 50km-odd wall along a border stretching several hundred kilometres does little to curb the corruption, including in Thailand itself, that facilitates illegal crossings.
THE SCAM SYNDICATE CRISIS
Certainly, thousands have been lured to scam centres clustered around Thailand’s borders like barnacles around the hull of a ship.
They are usually hard-up, unemployed youth from places like India, Pakistan, China, Myanmar, the Philippines, and even as far as Ethiopia and Somalia. Lured by promises of a job, they often arrive in Thailand first but then are taken to a scam centre where their passports are confiscated.
Stripped of their freedom, they become today's equivalent of drug mules trapped in an illicit economy worth billions of dollars, run by wealthy and powerful individuals, most of whom are well-known yet seemingly operate with impunity.
In our region, scam syndicates steal almost US$64 billion annually from victims around the world, according to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in a May 2024 report.
Sometimes, the hapless workers manage to get away or are rescued. In March, 549 Indians were repatriated after being rescued from scam centres operating near the Myanmar-Thailand border. China also repatriated thousands of its citizens in February and March.
The intense flurry of activity followed the abduction in January of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who was trafficked to Myanmar after being lured to Thailand for a film shoot.
Wang had exchanged a series of texts with his girlfriend in China after landing in Bangkok, but went silent after he reached Mae Sot, the Thai border town across from Myawaddy, a notorious scam hub in Myanmar.
Alarmed, his girlfriend alerted Chinese police and consular officials in Thailand and went public on social media. In the end, Thai police retrieved Wang Xing from Myawaddy and brought him back to Thailand, in an operation whose details remain unknown.
The fallout from the media coverage was immediate. Thousands of tourists from China - Thailand’s largest source market - cancelled their trips. This was a shock to Thailand’s treasured tourism industry as well as its international reputation, and put Bangkok in an awkward position, under pressure to do something about the scam centres run by transnational organised crime syndicates.
In February, Thai authorities cut off cross-border power supply to three areas where transnational crime groups are known to operate: Myawaddy; Payathonzu opposite Three Pagodas Pass in Kanchanaburi; and Tachilek opposite Mae Sai district in Chiang Rai.
Even if the crime syndicates have their own backup power supply arrangements, this was seen as the first serious action by the Thai government to hit back at them.
CHINA’S INVOLVEMENT
China has taken an increasingly hardline stance, pressing the Thai government to do more.
It has asked Thailand to continue with the power cuts, despite pleas from hospitals in affected Myanmar towns to restore electricity.
China has also deployed its assistant minister for public security Liu Zhongyi to spearhead a three-nation cybercrime operation along the Myanmar-Thailand border, but his presence has attracted controversy over China’s reach in its neighbourhood.
In February, Liu visited Mae Sot and Myawaddy, apparently to assess operations and inspect facilities for rescuing and repatriating victims. He then travelled to the notorious town of Shwe Kokko in Myanmar to meet Colonel Saw Chit Thu, the Karen warlord who runs the local Border Guard Force (BGF), a 10,000-strong militia aligned with the Myanmar junta.
Saw Chit Thu has been described by the Thai newspaper The Nation as a “master of defection and betrayal (who has) secured wealth, influence and control over the illicit underworld along the Thai-Myanmar border”. In December 2023, the United Kingdom sanctioned him for alleged involvement in forced labour schemes. Thailand’s Department of Special Investigation is also seeking his arrest on human trafficking charges.
The pressure may have paid off. Saw Chit Thu subsequently pledged that his BGF would crack down on scammers and human traffickers within its territory and facilitate the repatriation of victims. According to reports, these numbered over 2,000 from 12 different nationalities, the majority of them Chinese.
WELL-CONNECTED CRIMINAL GROUPS
Myanmar is not the only headache for Thailand. Across the Mekong in Laos lies another notorious place, the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, operated by Chinese-origin Zhao Wei, another seemingly untouchable kingpin who in 2018 was sanctioned by the US Treasury.
Cambodia, too, is a major base for transnational crime syndicates that are highly mobile, several steps ahead of law enforcement, and as in Myanmar, Laos and also Thailand, often in league with corrupt local politicians and police.
In late February, apparently prodded by Thai authorities, Cambodian police rescued 215 foreigners, 109 of them Thais, from a scam compound in Poipet. Media reported that the land and the building belong to a high-ranking government official in the local Cambodian province.
Authorities in Bangkok appear to be serious about curbing transnational crime syndicates. But they are up against highly mobile and well-connected criminal enterprises, and moreover are far away from the border zones where vested interests thrive on the money spread around by the syndicates.
Countering the criminal syndicates requires ending impunity for kingpins and an industry that revolves around borderless global digital communications.
Building a physical wall or a fence, on part of a border that is easily circumvented, is essentially a 20th century solution for a 21st century problem.
Nirmal Ghosh is a former foreign correspondent and independent author and writer based in Thailand and Singapore. He is also on the Board of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) but this article represents his personal views, not those of GITOC.
