Beatings, electric shocks, no food: tortured Indonesian scam victims in Myanmar plead for freedom from Chinese gang
- Jakarta is scrambling to rescue 20 citizens held captive by a Chinese-run online scam ring after they were lured with higher pay and trafficked to the strife-torn Myawaddy
- The sister of one of the victims said the group was being confined ‘in a dark room, with no food, drinks, and running water in the bathroom’
Rina Komaria, a diplomat at the Indonesian foreign ministry’s directorate of protection of Indonesian citizens, told This Week in Asia on Thursday that it had followed up the evacuation requests by sending diplomatic notes to its Myanmar counterpart, coordinating with local authorities, and working with groups such as the International Organization for Migration.
“The challenges on the ground are indeed high. Most Indonesian citizens are in Myawaddy, the location of the armed conflict between the Myanmar military and rebel groups,” Rina said.
“But we have urged the Myanmar authorities to take effective steps to save Indonesian citizens and to map the networks in Myawaddy through collaboration with various online scam monitoring agencies. Formal and informal approaches also continue to be made.”
The families of the captives, alongside Indonesian Migrant Workers Union, on Tuesday reported two Indonesians who were allegedly involved with the human trafficking ring to the national police’s Criminal Investigation Agency, following their similar complaint to the National Human Rights Commission in March. The victims’ families have also been requesting help from the foreign ministry since February.
Push-up, squat jump, electrocution
Among the 20 victims confined in Myawaddy is Budi, the 37-year-old brother of Veriyanti Chandra, who asked her sibling’s name to be disguised in fear of retaliation.
Budi left for Thailand on November 6 in a speedy process that only took four days since he first started making a passport until he got a flight ticket and a visa, Veriyanti said.
“He only told me that he was going to work overseas as a marketing staff for a stock exchange, it’s all very sudden,” she said.
“I asked him to verify [the job offer], to check whether it’s real, but I think he didn’t have the time to do that because everything was processed quickly.”
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Veriyanti said Budi told her that he was offered a monthly salary of 15 million rupiah (US$1,024), and if he reaches the target set by the company, he could return to Indonesia within six months and go to Thailand again as he pleases.
But within three days of arrival, Budi voiced his suspicion as his job tasks weren’t as advertised.
“After he arrived in Bangkok, he told me that was taken in a car to Thailand’s border, and from there he had to cross a river [to Myanmar] under the supervision of armed guards,” Veriyanti said.
Budi’s job was to enlist 10 non-Indonesian phone numbers, to later be relayed to his colleagues who would offer the number owners an opportunity to invest in cryptocurrency, Veriyanti said.
He had to work 17 hours (from 8pm to 1pm) every day, which also includes a punishment of squat-running around the field under the hot sun, squat jumps, push-ups, and electrocution. According to Veriyanti, Budi’s salary was also only around 3 million rupiah (US$204) and it hasn’t been paid since February.
“He told me that he’s worried that he would die due to a stray bomb, as he works in a conflict zone,” she said.
“He and his friends had to work in the dark, with only the computers’ screens on. They sleep in a dorm guarded by armed men, so they couldn’t escape.”
Budi had asked the company to return him to Indonesia, but it sought 200 million rupiah (US$13,620) in fines for his freedom, Veriyanti said. In her last contact with her brother on April 23, Veriyanti said that the group was being held captive “in a dark room, with no food, drinks, and running water in the bathroom”.
“A woman in the group must take insulin every day, and now she can no longer walk. I am also worried about my brother, since I read that the temperature in Myanmar recently reached above 40 degrees Celsius and he wasn’t given water,” Veriyanti said.
In an Instagram video shared on April 21 by the victims’ families called “Bebaskan Kami”, or Free Us, another hostage named Noviana Indah Susanti, said that a person can be beaten by up to 10 people if they were deemed underperforming.
“Two days ago a woman was electrocuted, hit with a pipe, grabbed and dragged away. Our conscience wanted to help, but if we tried to help her we could also get hurt because there were more of them than twenty of us,” she said.
In another video posted on April 19, the victims’ relatives claimed that four of the workers “are going to be sold to another company, while the others will be [sold] to another team led by a Chinese leader who was notorious for their cruel punishment”.
Since 2020 to date, Jakarta’s foreign ministry has received reports from 203 Indonesian scam victims in Myanmar, but only 127 have been repatriated as of April.
