Laos’s state-run media outlets should regularly publish news items about human trafficking victims to better publicize the issue in a country where young people continue to fall victim to cyberscam operations in neighboring countries, several parents of trafficking victims told Radio Free Asia.
If government officials talked to newspapers and broadcast outlets about individual cases – or about the general issue of human trafficking – there would be more awareness among younger Lao people, the parents said.
“Up until now, everything has been silent and human traffickers are not charged with any law,” said one parent who asked for anonymity because of safety concerns.
“My daughter recently told me that human traffickers are still looking for young Lao people to work as scammers in Burma.”
The parents spoke to RFA ahead of Tuesday’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.
In recent years, secret sites have proliferated throughout Southeast Asia as the COVID-19 pandemic forced criminal networks to shift their strategies for making money. Vast networks of human trafficking claim over 150,000 victims a year in the region.
In one case, several dozen young Laotians were trafficked and held captive in a nondescript building on the Burmese-Thai border, isolated from the outside world, tortured and forced into a particular kind of labor: to work as a cyber-scammer.
“They are lured to work with promised high paid jobs in town,” a northern Laos government official told RFA. “It is because they are from countryside areas, and they lack awareness of anti-human trafficking.”
But even with a wider understanding of the risks, young people in Laos’ rural areas are still tempted by work outside the country because of high inflation and a lack of high-paying jobs at home, the official said.
“Even with regular publicity about anti-human trafficking, economic hardship makes people have no choice,” he said. “They have to take risks to get jobs.”
In May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes set up an Emergency Response Network to help Laos and other countries in the region combat human trafficking and scamming activities.
In the past, Laos has relied on other forms of foreign aid to address human trafficking and scamming crimes.
But a Ministry of Public Security official told RFA that the government just doesn't have enough money or personnel to investigate every case of human trafficking or to investigate the traffickers who visit rural areas to recruit young people under false pretenses.
The government’s anti-human trafficking committee reported in December there were 24 human trafficking cases last year, with 53 victims rescued and transferred to rehabilitation centers, according to Lao Deputy Minister of Public Security Khamking Phouilamanyvong, who is a vice chairman of the committee.
Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Matt Reed.