Category World News

China has executed 11 people linked to online scam centres in Myanmar, according to state media, as Beijing toughens its crackdown on the illegal operations.

Those executed on Thursday were sentenced to death in September by a court in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, Xinhua said, adding that the court also carried out the executions.

The crimes of those executed included “intentional homicide, intentional injury, unlawful detention, fraud and casino establishment”, Xinhua added.

Fraud compounds where scammers lure internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar’s borderlands.

Largely targeting Chinese speakers at the outset, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from and defraud victims around the world.

Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work.

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Thailand and Myanmar to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to face trial.

The death sentences for the 11 people executed were approved by the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing, which found that the evidence produced of crimes committed since 2015 was “conclusive and sufficient”, reported Xinhua.

Among the executed were members of the “Ming family criminal group”, whose activities had contributed to the deaths of 14 Chinese citizens and injuries to “many others”.

Fraud operations centred in Myanmar’s border regions have extracted billions of dollars from around the world through phone and internet scams.

Experts say most of the centres are run by Chinese-led crime syndicates working with Myanmar militias, who have been taking advantage of the country’s instability and ongoing war.

Myanmar’s military government has long been accused of turning a blind eye to the centres but has trumpeted a crackdown since February after being lobbied by key military backer China, experts say.

Some of its raids have been part of a propaganda effort, according to several monitors, choreographed to vent pressure from Beijing without badly denting profits that enrich the military government’s militia allies.

In October, the military arrested more than 2,000 people in a raid on KK Park, an infamous scam centre on the border with Thailand.

The September rulings that resulted in Thursday’s executions also included death sentences with two-year reprieves to five other individuals.

Another 23 suspects were given prison sentences ranging from five years to life.

In November, Chinese authorities sentenced five people to death for their involvement in scam operations in Myanmar’s Kokang region.

Their crimes had led to the deaths of six Chinese nationals, according to state media reports.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 120,000 people may be working in online scam centres in Myanmar.

Another 100,000 may be trapped in Cambodia, according to the UN, with thousands more in similar facilities across Southeast Asia.

Online scam operations have proliferated in Cambodia since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the global shutdown saw many Chinese-owned casinos and hotels in the country pivot to illicit operations.

Operating from industrial-scale scam centres, tens of thousands of workers perpetrate online romance scams known as “pig-butchering”, often targeting people in the West in a vastly lucrative industry responsible for the theft of tens of billions of dollars each year.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime warned in April that the cyberscam industry was spreading across the world, including to South America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and a number of Pacific Islands.

Dozens of people have been killed in a drone attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on a key town in war-torn Sudan’s South Kordofan state, according to local media reports.

Multiple areas of Dilling, including the headquarters of the Sudanese army’s 54th Brigade and the central market, were struck by suicide drones during Wednesday’s attack, the Sudan Tribune reported, citing local sources and medical groups.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the latest RSF attack, which came a day after the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) announced that it had broken a nearly two-year-long RSF siege on Dilling, gaining control over key supply lines.

Dilling lies halfway between Kadugli – the besieged state capital – and el-Obeid, the capital of neighbouring North Kordofan province, which the RSF has sought to encircle.

The RSF and the SAF have been waging a brutal civil war for control of Sudan since April 2023, which has killed thousands of people and displaced millions.

Since the siege was lifted, Dilling has endured a wave of drone attacks that have destroyed service facilities and caused several casualties.

Military sources told the Sudan Tribune that the RSF was attempting to reinstate the blockade, though the SAF continues to hold the area and repel assaults near the strategic town of Habila in North Kordofan state.

Amid these clashes, the Sudan Doctors Network has called for an urgent humanitarian corridor to deliver life-saving food and medicine. Local sources said the situation on the ground remains desperate, with a severe lack of health services and a critical shortage of essential supplies, particularly intravenous fluids.

After being forced out of the capital, Khartoum, in March, the RSF has focused on the Kordofan region and el-Fasher city in North Darfur state, which was the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region until the RSF seized it in October.

Reports of the paramilitary carrying out mass killings, rape, abductions and looting emerged after el-Fasher’s takeover, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched a formal investigation into “war crimes” by both sides.

Dilling has reportedly experienced severe hunger, but the world’s leading authority on food security, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, did not declare famine there in its November report because of a lack of data.

A United Nations-backed assessment last year confirmed famine in Kadugli, which has been under RSF siege for more than a year and a half.

More than 65,000 people have fled the Kordofan region since October, according to the latest UN figures.

The conflict has created what the UN describes as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis, though some people have returned to their homes despite shattered infrastructure.

At its peak, the war has displaced about 14 million people, both internally and across borders.

Police may investigate an alleged bombing attempt during an Indigenous rights protest in Perth, Western Australia, as a possible “terrorist” incident, following calls from Indigenous leaders and human rights groups for a more robust response from authorities.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Thursday that the incident was now being investigated by police as a “potential terrorist act”, two days after a 31-year-old man was charged with throwing a “homemade improvised explosive device” at an Invasion Day protest attended by thousands of people on Monday.

The device did not explode and there were no injuries, police said.

Police charged the man with throwing the device, which consisted of nails and ball bearings, into a large crowd during a protest on Australia’s national holiday, Australia Day, which is also referred to as Invasion Day, since it commemorates the 1788 arrival of a British fleet in Sydney Harbour.

A search of the suspect’s home was conducted, where it was further alleged that a combination of chemicals and materials consistent with the manufacture of homemade explosives was found, Western Australia Police Force said in a statement.

The suspect was charged with an attempt to cause harm and with making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances.

Hannah McGlade, a member of the Indigenous Noongar community, told national broadcaster ABC on Thursday that it appeared police had “heard our concerns” regarding the attack.

“A lot of people have been adding concern that it hasn’t been looked at properly as a hate crime or even possibly as a terror crime,” said McGlade, an associate professor of law at Curtin University in Australia.

Indigenous people felt “absolute horror that so many people could have been injured and killed at an event like this, a peaceful gathering”, McGlade added.

The Human Rights Law Centre also called for “the violent, racist attack on First Nations people” to be “investigated as an act of terrorism or hate crime”.

“Reports by rally organisers and witnesses raise serious questions about [Western Australia] Police’s response and communication with organisers, both before and after the attack,” the legal group said in a statement.

The group also said reports that police failed “to address credible threats received ahead of the rally” should be “fully and independently investigated”.

Police alleged that the suspect removed the device from his bag and threw it from a walkway into a crowd of more than 2,000 people during the Invasion Day protest in Perth on Monday.

Alerted by a member of the public, police took the man into custody and bomb response officers inspected the device, the Western Australia Police Force said in a statement.