Eleven pregnant women are among the more than 2,400 people stuck in limbo on after being pulled out of scam compounds in Myanmar and are in urgent need of medical treatment in Thailand, a civil society group said on Friday.
The 11 women are being kept in a camp with harsh living conditions, scant healthcare and insufficient food for them, Jay Kritiya, a coordinator for the Citizens Network for Human Trafficking Victims told Reuters.
“There were 12 women who are three to four months pregnant,” Jay said. “One of them had a miscarriage two days ago.”
Some of the women have said their pregnancies were the result of rape while they were captive workers in the call-centre scam businesses, according to local media reports.
Thailand is fronting a regional effort to dismantle scam centres along its borders, which are part of a Southeast Asian fraud network across multiple countries that generate billions of dollars from scams every year, often using people trafficked by criminal gangs, according to the United Nations.
Thailand has for weeks been coordinating efforts to repatriate 7,372 people of about 20 different nationalities from the Myanmar scam operations, many of them to China.
The Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that more than 2,400 were still at the border waiting to be returned to their home countries.
The Citizens Network for Human Trafficking Victims on March 15 visited the camp where the pregnant women have been kept, run by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army.
The militia group said the DKBA was providing sufficient care for others but had limited resources and needed help for those requiring medical attention. The group has asked Thai authorities to transfer those in need to Tak province on the Thai side of the border.
The National Human Rights Commission on Wednesday relayed the request to all relevant Thai authorities.
The top police general leading Thailand’s operations against the scamming network this week told Reuters an estimated 100,000 people were still operating in scam centres at the Thai-Myanmar border.
Preliminary investigations indicate hundreds of those pulled out so far had gone to the centres voluntarily, said said Pol Gen Thatcher Pitaneelaboot, an inspector-general with the Royal Thai Police.
