New book tells ‘true stories' of Hongkongers trafficked to Myanmar scam farms

HKFP

4 days ago

Wearing dark blue medical masks, Wendy and her younger sister stepped in front of the audience at a book launch.
The two, hesitant to reveal their faces, used pseudonyms, still wary that they could endanger people still held captive in Myanmar scam farms.
Wendy's sister – identified only with the pseudonym 'Luncheon Meat' – was trafficked across the Thai border into Myanmar last summer after she took up a purchasing agent job in Thailand.
Upon arriving in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand, the recruiters seized her identity documents and drove her across the border into Myanmar. Soon after, while staying in a complex at the border town, she was forced to conduct investment scams targeting wealthy American men.
Cases of Hongkongers trafficked to Myanmar were widely reported last year, following a surge in 2022.
'Luncheon Meat' is featured in a new book, No Way Out: Modern Slavery Behind the Scam Curtain, written by former opposition district councillor Andy Yu and social worker Frank Fung.
It details the harrowing accounts of Hongkongers trafficked to Myanmar's notorious 'scam factories' and the great lengths their families went to bring them home.
Yu interviewed the two sisters, along with other victims and their loved ones, early this year
The former district councillor was approached by the Hong Kong Economic Journal, a local newspaper, to write a book after he supported several victims' families through the ordeal.
Too little, too late
One chapter of the book is told from Wendy's perspective, detailing the seven months of bringing her sister home – from taking the bogus job and enduring the torturous conditions in the Myanmar scam farms to the family's rescue efforts that eventually led to her release in March.
'There were lots of things that I was afraid I did too late… or that I didn't do enough,' Wendy said at the book launch event last week.
'It felt like we had to be alert for 24 hours a day,' she said, recounting how she and the rest of her family would stay up late, fearing they might miss her sister's messages.
Keeping up with her sister's whereabouts also proved to be an ordeal, as she was moved multiple times between interconnected compounds that rapidly sprang up over the past few years amid the civil war in Myanmar.
Since a military coup ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering armed conflicts with ethnic militias, human trafficking has surged, along with other forms of transnational crime. In lockstep, scam compounds have cropped up along Myanmar's southern border.
After Luncheon Meat was found texting her family over WhatsApp, her captors demanded a US$500,000 (HK$4 million) ransom for her release, but her family could not afford it. There was no way they could scrape together such a hefty sum, never mind that there was no guarantee her captors would honour their promise.
'We all knew that paying the ransom would not save them, and would even allow the captors to take advantage of the situation,' Wendy says in the book.
She also recounts seeking assistance from vigilante-style groups on Chinese social media, which she suspects had ties to the Myanmar syndicates. Some claimed they could help rescue people in the compounds under a 'two in, one out' agreement — an 'absurd' condition that would require Wendy to 'bring' two people into the scam farms for her sister's rescue.
'There were also times I was afraid that I had done too much,' Wendy said at last week's event. She added that she faced a 'dilemma' as to whether she should reveal more or exercise caution when speaking to the press, including HKFP earlier this year.
'When we decided to approach the media, we were worried about saying or revealing too much about the victims. Would the crime syndicates recognise them [from news reports]? Would that put them in even more danger?' she said.
Wendy's sister was among the trafficking victims who were eventually brought home after mainland Chinese actor Wang Xing, reported missing along the Thai-Myanmar border in January, was rescued following a joint operation between Thai and Chinese authorities.
For the families of the trafficking victims, the celebrity's rescue showed that Chinese authorities had leverage over the military-affiliated ethnic armed groups in control of the scam farms in Myanmar.
Just days after Wang's rescue, Hong Kong sent a task force to take part in joint rescue operations with the Thai authorities and the Chinese embassy. The trafficking victims were released gradually over the span of about three months.
As of mid-March, three Hong Kong residents were still waiting to be rescued from scam farms in Myanmar, according to the city's government.
Cautionary tale
Yu, who is scheduled to give a talk on the book later this month at the Hong Kong Book Fair, said he hoped the victims' stories would serve as a cautionary tale, particularly for young people facing economic precarity.
The book is the first of its kind, laying out Hongkongers' accounts of the Myanmar cybercrime compounds, he added.
Yu said that the victims and families were advised against revealing too much to the public – an approach he disagreed with.
'Shouldn't the public know what's going on in those compounds? The government is always talking about educating people against scammers, but a better and more realistic approach would be to tell the true stories of the victims,' he said.
Yu also said that he had notified Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk about the book's publication.
Earlier, without naming the ex-councillor, security chief Chris Tang had said that commenting publicly on the trafficking cases without a full understanding of official operations 'may not be a good thing' for those who were still waiting to be saved.
Yu's co-author, Fung, said that the book might help young Hongkongers who are unaware of the methods used in job scams stay vigilant, adding that crime syndicates in Southeast Asia could strike again.
If the government believes the book could be useful for young people with limited experience in the workforce, it could be placed in school libraries, he said, while also calling on the authorities to step up anti-fraud education.
After the event, Yu also pointed to the lack of human trafficking laws in Hong Kong. Instead, those prosecuted over human trafficking cases are usually charged with fraud, a lighter offence in most jurisdictions.
Asked whether he was worried that he might face criticism or allegations that he was trying to pave the way for the Legislative Council elections at the end of the year, Yu said that he had no intention of running for office.
In the preface, the two authors defended the victims and their families against victim-blaming attitudes, saying the book could not have been written without the victims and their families having the courage to speak up.
'There's a common refrain that the victims were stupid, that they only have themselves to blame for wanting to make a quick buck. It has to be said that blaming or ridiculing victims who have gone through great suffering will only cause secondary victimisation and stop them from standing up and talking about their experiences,' the authors wrote.
'In fact, almost all of the interviewees admitted that they were foolish. But even if that were the case, that doesn't mean they should be imprisoned, physically and mentally tortured, forced to work, or face death threats.'