Johor youth made a slave in Myanmar, forced to eat rats

 

A 20-year-old job seeker from Johor was abducted and made a slave by a scam syndicate in Myanmar last September, where he and 15 other Malaysians were kept in a prison-like facility and forced to eat rats, among others.

Speaking about his ordeal to the Malay daily Berita Harian, Mohamad Farhan Azman from Batu Pahat said he and four friends were lured by the syndicate with a lucrative job offer in Singapore.

They were initially promised jobs as hotel housekeeping staff in the island republic and travelled to Bangkok, Thailand on Sept 13 where they spent the night at a hotel before being taken by the syndicate to a farm area at the Thailand-Myanmar border.

"By then we have started to feel that something was amiss. Some people even said that we have been sold. And once we arrived at a river, a group of men forced us to get onto a boat.

"After about 20 minutes, we arrived at a location where there were armed men clad in military fatigues waiting. They then told us to get onto several four-wheel drive vehicles," he said, as quoted by the daily.

Farhan was recently saved and managed to return to Malaysia.

The article however did not explain why Farhan and his friends had to go to Bangkok instead of Singapore, where they were supposed to be employed.

According to the youth, he and other victims were forced to do scam work for the syndicate, where they would sell cheap items to consumers in Europe as a tactic to get into their banking accounts.

Once buyers click a link sent to make payment, Farhan said, the syndicate would have access to their bank accounts and siphon their money out.

Female victims sexually assaulted

While he was lucky to be saved from the syndicate and was brought home, Farhan claimed that there were at least 15 other Malaysians still stuck at the prison-like facility in KK Garden, Myanmar.

He said the ordeal was worse for female victims as they would also be sexually abused and made sex slaves to the syndicate members, including the armed men guarding them.

There were also female victims who were underaged, and they too were sexually exploited, according to Farhan.

"I do not know how the others are right now... because when we were there, the four-storey building was covered with barbed wire and there was only one way in and out. It was really like a prison.

"All of us, who are aged between 18 and 26, were unable to run away as we were closely guarded by the armed men," he said. - Mkini