Kenyan man flees call centre scam gang in Myanmar to Thailand
A Kenyan man fled a brutal assault by a call centre scam gang in Myanmar and sought help from Thai residents in the Phop Phra district of Tak province yesterday, February 9.
Officers from Phop Phra Police Station and residents assisted the 30 year old Kenyan man, Jame Opunde Amunga, who escaped from Myawaddy, Myanmar. He arrived at a local grocery shop in the province with wounds and bruises across his body and was visibly limping.
Amunga told Thai locals that he walked for five hours, covering over 10 kilometres, despite his injuries, to cross from Myanmar into Thailand.
According to Amunga, he was deceived by a Kenyan recruitment agency, which offered him a customer manager position in Thailand with a high salary. He arrived in Thailand via Suvarnabhumi International Airport on 5 October last year, accompanied by two other Kenyan nationals.
A representative of the agency met them upon arrival and illegally transported them to Myanmar via the border in the Mae Sot district of Tak province.
Amunga and the two other Kenyans were forced to scam people by tricking victims into investing in cryptocurrency. If they refused, the Chinese ringleaders of the scam would subject them to various forms of abuse.
Amunga said the Chinese scammers attacked him and others with stun batons and baseball bats and poured hot wax on their bodies, leaving them with burns. He had been searching for a way to escape for four months before finally succeeding.
ThaiRath reported that Amunga was one of 45 Kenyan nationals listed as victims of the call centre scam gang.
According to ThaiRath, the area where Amunga and others were held and tortured was a new base for the scam gang, under the control of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA). It is located about 5 to 6 kilometres from the gang’s former base near the Thai border.
More than 1,000 people were reportedly forced to work there, including individuals from the Philippines, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
Officers transferred Amunga to the Centre for the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for further assistance and information gathering to help other victims.
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