Sixteen Lao workers released from a Chinese-run casino in Myanmar in August have arrived home in Laos after a two-month stay at a police station, family members told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
The workers have said that they were victims of human trafficking who went to work at the Kosai Casino in Myawaddy town, across the border from the Thai city of Mae Sot.
“I’m very happy. I’m unable to say,” the mother of one of the workers from Luang Namtha province said. “I can’t do anything. My body is shaking. I never dreamed they would be released and sent back home.”
The workers said they were held against their will, forced to work as scammers and regularly subjected to harsh punishments if they failed to bring in money.
After their release on Aug. 29, the group was detained at a Myanmar police station on charges of illegal entry.
In April, Radio Free Asia reported that the group of teenagers from Luang Namtha had been trafficked to a place they called the "Casino Kosai," in an isolated development near the city of Myawaddy on Myanmar's eastern border with Thailand.
Other teenagers and young people from Luang Namtha were still believed to be trapped at the site, along with victims from other parts of Asia.
Relatives have spent the last two months asking for assistance from the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lao Embassy in Myanmar and Lao anti-human trafficking police. It was unclear what prompted the Myanmar police to allow them to leave the station.
The mother told RFA that the group has been at the border in northwestern Laos’ Bokeo province where Lao authorities have been doing paperwork and other processing for the group.
“They will send them to Luang Namtha tomorrow or the next day,” she said on Monday. “Then they will send them to the anti-human trafficking unit in Luang Namtha, which will investigate who lured them to work in the Chinese casino.”
Celebrations planned
A Lao government official told RFA that the group arrived at the border on Saturday.
“We will let their families pick them up,” he said. “If they are unable to come, authorities will send them home.”
Another mother of a released worker said the family was planning to kill two chickens to make a traditional Lao soup to welcome them home.
“My son called me and sent a photo of all of them at Bokeo,” she said. “They are staying at a guesthouse over there. I am very happy that they are safe.”
Myawaddy, in southeastern Myanmar’s Kayin state, is home to the Yatai Shwe Kokko Special Economic Zone, which was promoted as a way to spur economic growth and deliver material benefits to the local community.
Instead, the Chinese-backed US$15 billion real estate mega-project has gained notoriety as a bastion of illegal activity, according to a report by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, C4ADS, an independent research outfit that studies transnational organized crime networks.
Scammers and human traffickers operate with near-total immunity from the law in the zone, where they treat their victims like chattel, beating them when they don’t comply and demanding payment in exchange for setting them free.
According to a geolocation pin sent to RFA by several parents of the Lao teens, Casino Kosai appears to be a warehouse some 20 miles south of Myawaddy city, across the border from a Thai town.
Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.