Chinese TV actor Wang Xing is heading back to China on Friday following his rescue from Myanmar’s notorious KK Park human trafficking and scam operation, where he was lured on the fake promise of a job, according to local media reports.
Wang, who appeared in public with a shaved head following his release, will fly to Shanghai on Friday evening local time, his lawyer told state media, but his family had requested that the flight number not be publicized.
Thai police reported on Jan. 7 that Wang, 31, a relatively unknown TV actor, had been rescued after being lured to Thailand by scammers.
According to Thai police, Wang didn’t realize he’d been deceived until his he was taken across the river into Myanmar and found himself “in a rustic environment.”
However, he did take photos of his vehicle’s license plate and key landmarks on the way, sending them to his girlfriend in China, Chinese state media quoted Thailand’s Senior Inspector General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot as saying.
Wang’s girlfriend Jia Jia then raised the alarm on Chinese social media after losing touch with him, according to the Global Times.
“I’m grateful to the Thai government and the local immigration authorities for bringing me back here safely,” Wang told Thai broadcaster PBS. “I realized I’d been tricked when they took me across the border, but I didn’t dare to resist.”
KK Park
The actor was taken to KK Park in Myawaddy, Myanmar, near the Thai border, where thousands of human trafficking victims from all over Asia — and as far away as Africa — are being held hostage by scammers in the area, victims have told Radio Free Asia in earlier reports.
They said they were lured by false advertisements and forced to scam other people, then tortured if they refused to comply.
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The families of victims from Hong Kong recently petitioned the city’s leader John Lee for help, while the relatives of 174 mainland Chinese nationals believed to be in KK Park have made their details public following Wang Xing’s rescue, state media reported.
The campaigners say their relatives are mostly men between the ages of 17 and 35, and have been missing for anything from a few months to a few years, China’s Global Times newspaper reported.
Trips to Thailand
Wang’s kidnapping has prompted a wave of cancellations of planned trips to Thailand by Chinese nationals, local media reported.
“Many Chinese travelers planning to visit Thailand for the upcoming Lunar New Year have expressed concerns on social media this week and posed blunt questions,” Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported.
In a separate report, the paper said Cantopop star Eason Chan had canceled a gig in Thailand, citing safety concerns.
Wang’s return came amid growing fears for the safety of Chinese model Yang Zeqi, who is also missing, believed held in KK Park after traveling to the Thai-Myanmar border region, according to HK01.com.
Yang’s family made an appeal on Weibo on the evening of Jan. 8, saying he had traveled there “after passing an online audition.”
Yang spoke to his mother by video call on Dec. 29, wearing black clothes and looking beat up, telling her he was OK, but nothing has been heard from him since, the report said.
Thai police are investigating his disappearance, according to Thailand’s The Nation.
‘Intensified police crackdowns’
According to China’s Global Times, the majority of Chinese nationals are taken to the park either from the Thai border area, or after crossing the border into Myanmar from the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan.
Some families still receive occasional messages from their loved ones, but most appear to have had their personal belongings and devices confiscated, the report said.
“Due to intensified police crackdowns by the authorities in China, Myanmar and Thailand, profits from these scam centers have since dwindled,” the paper said, citing family members.
“As a result, these centers have ramped up their deceptive tactics [and] new types of scams are also emerging,” it said, adding that scammers are now targeting actors and language teachers with the promise of jobs.
In November, an ethnic minority militia in northern Myanmar detained more than 1,000 people suspected of online scamming, the majority of them Chinese nationals, and deported them back to China.
Online scamming centers have proliferated across Southeast Asia in recent years, especially in some of the more lawless parts of Myanmar, as well as in neighboring Laos and Cambodia.
The centers are often run by Chinese gangs and are notorious for luring unsuspecting people into jobs that entail going online to contact and defraud people, many in China.
Chinese authorities are keen to get the rackets based over the border in Myanmar shut down, and so action against them has become a key factor for rival factions in Myanmar, from the junta to its insurgent enemies and other militias, as they vie for China’s favor.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.