Thai police said they have no evidence that a 19-year-old Lao woman recently sought safety at a police station near the Myanmar border, raising the possibility that statements she made in messages to Radio Free Asia last week were false.
The woman, who said she’s been forced to work at a Chinese-run scam center in Myanmar for two years, sent two messages last week saying she had been released from the scam center.
The young woman, who withheld her name out of fear of reprisals, told RFA in a voice message that she had crossed the Myanmar border and had arrived in Thailand’s Mae Sot district on Dec. 4, adding that she was unsure when she would continue on to Laos.
On Dec. 6, she told RFA that she was staying at a police station in Mae Sot and expected to be released to Laos within 15 days.
But if the young woman had been sent to the station, officers would have contacted immigration police and the Lao Embassy, a Thai officer in Mae Sot said.
“She would have been returned home,” he said. “A Lao girl from Myanmar? There is no one.”
Based on previous cases, it’s likely that someone forced her to say that she had been freed and was in Thailand, the officer said.
“There was someone behind her telling her to say this or that,” he said. “Someone might tell her to lie to get her parents to come, but the fact is, there’s no one here.”
RFA has tried repeatedly this week to reach the woman through Facebook. She last responded on Dec. 6. All messages since then appear to have been unread.
Last week, she told RFA that the gang members at the scam center sometimes beat her when she fails to scam potential victims.
After learning that the young woman was apparently not staying with Thai police, her mother said she’s now worried that the scam center operators have taken her to another center.
“What am I going to do now? I don’t know what to do,” she told RFA. “If I was able to contact her, I would feel better.”
Translated by Khamsao Civilize. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.