China executes 11 people linked to Myanmar scam centers

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BEIJING — China has executed 11 people belonging to a notorious gang that ran scam centers in Myanmar as Beijing toughens its crackdown on the illegal online operations, Xinhua news agency reported

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 eleven members of the Ming family are the first of the Myanmar scam bosses to be executed by China. They were sentenced in September for various crimes including homicide, illegal detention, fraud and operating gambling dens by a court in China's Zhejiang province.

Their scam empire came crashing down in 2023, when they were detained and handed over to China by ethnic militias that had taken control of Laukkaing during an escalation in their conflict with Myanmar's army.

With these executions Beijing is sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers. But the business has now moved to Myanmar's border with Thailand, and to Cambodia and Laos, where China has much less influence.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the UN. Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims who they swindle billions of dollars from are mainly Chinese too.

Frustrated by the Myanmar military's refusal to stop the scam business, from which it was almost certainly profiting, Beijing tacitly backed an offensive by an ethnic insurgent alliance in Shan State in late 2023. The alliance captured significant territory from the military and overran Laukkaing, a key border town.

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The Mings were one of many clans that ran the town of Laukkaing, transforming an impoverished backwater town into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts.

Five members of the Bai family were also sentenced to death in November, and the trials of two other groups of defendants from the Wei and the Liu families have not yet concluded.

The Ming family's trial was held behind closed doors, although more than 160 people were allowed to attend their sentencing hearing last year, including families of victims.

More than 20 others from the Ming family were given jail sentences in September ranging from five years to life. Ming Xuechang, the clan's patriarch, killed himself in 2023 while trying to avoid detention, Myanmar's military had said back then.

The confessions of those who were arrested were aired in state media documentaries, to emphasize Chinese authorities' resolve to eradicate scam networks.

At first gambling and prostitution were the main sources of income for these families, but they eventually started online fraud, staffed mostly by people who were kidnapped and forced to run these scams. — Agencies