1 more victim rescued from scam farm but 10 still detained in Myanmar, Hong Kong leader says
Hong Kong Free Press
Another Hongkonger has been rescued from a scam farm, leaving a total of 10 Hong Kong residents still detained in Myanmar, the city’s leader John Lee confirmed.
“We’ve seen one more victim had been rescued from Myanmar recently, and we hope to further strengthen our work [in rescuing the victims], ” Lee said in Cantonese on Tuesday morning during the weekly press conference.
Since mid-2024, the government has received 28 requests to help Hongkongers held captive in Myanmar, and 18 of them have been rescued, the chief executive told reporters.
Andy Yu, a former district councillor and member of the defunct Civic Party, said on Facebook on Monday evening that a victim he had been assisting is now safe in Thailand after being rescued from a Myanmar scam ring.
The victim’s family has requested the Hong Kong government to assist the victim, who was detained illegally for four months, to return to the city, he said.
Yu, who has been supporting families of scam farm victims in the past five months, said on Commercial Radio on Tuesday morning that the family did not pay any ransom.
Yu said he believed that the victim was released because the Thai government had pressured the Myanmar military junta to help release Hongkongers.
The former district councillor assisted another victim’s family to visit the Myanmar consulate on Monday to plead for help.
Cases of Hongkongers being trafficked to Myanmar have risen in recent months, following a widely reported surge in 2022. Along with other forms of transnational crime, human trafficking has surged since Myanmar’s military ousted the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi administration in 2021, triggering a civil war with ethnic armed militias.
One trafficking victim returned to Hong Kong last Thursday after a Security Bureau-led task force flew to Thailand and met with the country’s officials to discuss about Hongkongers trafficked to Southeast Asia and held captive by scam rings in Myanmar.
Outbound travel alert
On Friday, days after Yu urged the government to change outbound travel alerts for Thailand and Myanmar to red, the Security Bureau raised the alert for Myanmar’s southeastern regions, which border Thailand, from amber to red.
The outbound travel alerts for Thailand and the rest of Myanmar remain yellow.
The red outbound travel alert signals a “significant threat” and reminds travellers to “avoid unnecessary travel,” while the amber alert, which applies to countries from Peru and Kenya to France, Belgium and the UK, advises travellers to “exercise caution.”
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