Demonstrations are planned for Thursday, May 16 in Rabat in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese embassy in Morocco. The motive is quite unusual: to demand more efforts to free and repatriate Moroccans detained in work camps in Burma.
The phenomenon is new but it has grown. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, some 200 Moroccans, “ very young ” men and women, most of them academics mastering new technologies, are in the hands of mafia organizations specializing in cybercrime.
These are Chinese mafia organizations based in Burma, on the border with Thailand, a region ravaged by civil war.
In Morocco, the case of these young captives has become a matter of public opinion, mobilizing Internet users, civil society and human rights organizations, and even deputies who questioned the head of diplomacy Nasser Bourita, in vain.
Moroccan diplomacy with absent subscribers
On Moroccan social networks, in addition to calls to bring these unfortunate people home, messages inviting vigilance are also shared. “ No confidence ”, we read on many Moroccan pages.
Because everything seems to start from a blind trust that these young people have placed in strangers. To understand what these young Moroccans are doing in Burma, a country on the other side of the world that is not known as a tourist or emigration destination, the correspondent of Le Monde in Casablanca went to meet two Moroccans who were able to escape their captors and families whose children have still not returned.
It turns out that these young people, most of them academics, were well-established in Morocco or abroad, in the Gulf or Europe, and were scammed by these networks which promised them highly qualified job positions. paid in their specialty, mainly e-commerce, in Thailand.
“ Until now, we were talking about young people without qualifications and without work who take to the sea to reach Europe. But here, most of them are employees, many of whom have gone to university,” indicated the secretary general of the Moroccan Human Rights Association, Tayeb Madmad.
Moroccans exploited in Burma by mafia organizations
The scammers take them through Malaysia, accessible without a visa for Moroccans, and then send them to Burma, instead of the promised Thailand.
Young Moroccans thus find themselves prisoners on site, in barracks along a river where a multitude of organizations controlled by the Chinese mafia and specialized in cyber-fraud abound.
The captives carry out, under duress, fraud operations on the Internet, targeting wealthy people in the four corners of the planet.
The Moroccan witnesses met by Le Monde were able to return home thanks to the intervention of NGOs seized by their families, not without having paid a large ransom, around 6,000 dollars.
Their testimonies are chilling: torture, humiliation, 17 hours of work a day every day of the week… And even murders. Moroccans are not the only nationality present there.
There would also be Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Sri Lankans, Tunisians, Lebanese, sub-Saharan Africans… Any attempt to flee or contact loved ones is followed by torture and confinement.
According to what relates to Morocco, the phenomenon is new. The young people fell for the scam between last November and February.
The foreign press is becoming more and more interested in their case. The Al Arabiya television channel also met a Moroccan woman who had returned from what she describes as the “ river of hell ” thanks also to the intervention of NGOs.
Burma: an open-air prison for young Moroccans
The young woman was a student in Turkey when she gave in to the offer made to her: a job in Thailand for $5,000 a month. She too recounted the unbearable scenes she witnessed, bullying, torture, murders, and suicides. She was beaten and locked in solitary confinement.
In its investigations, Al Arabiya was able to trace part of the sector, at least in Morocco.
The Moroccan “ recruitment ” center would be located in Marrakech and would be headed by a Moroccan. According to this media, there are 200,000 captives of different nationalities in Burma in the hands of these mafia organizations specializing in cyber-scams.
