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- [00:17]
A
First off, thanks for choosing to spend your time with us. I know that we're living in a time of limitless content options. It's an attention economy, after all, all of which are competing for your focus. And so we're humbled that you're choosing to your next hour or two with us. After all, we know that you could be binging a Netflix show, listening to your favorite songs on a Spotify playlist, or watching a live sporting event. Yet you've chosen to be here engaging with the stories and voices about Myanmar. That choice means so much to us, and it speaks to your desire to understand, connect, and stand in solidarity as we begin the story that follows. We're deeply grateful for your attention and support. It's what keeps this platform alive and meaningful. So let's listen in to the next voice.
- [01:25]
B
Sam. Sa.
- [02:22]
C
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Insight in Yama podcast. For today's episode, we are joined by Lindsay Kennedy, an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker and the director of Pony Media. She is also the research director of the Eyewitness Project and an organization that conducts in depth investigations into conflict, corruption and organized crime. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining our podcast today.
- [02:50]
B
Thanks very much for having me.
- [02:51]
C
Yes. So you have spent over a decade leading on the ground investigations across Southeast Asia, the Mekong region, Afghanistan and beyond, focusing on human trafficking, modern slavery, online scam industries, and transnational organized crime. Your work has been featured in outlets such as the Guardian, Foreign Policy, IJCR and South China Money Post, and you have received governments, diplomats and civil society actors on these issues. So before we get into the substance or your research, I'd like to start with your personal and professional journey. You studied at Cambridge and Glasgow and later founded Tapuni Media in 2011. Could you walk us through how you moved from academic study into investigative journalism and feedback research and what initially drew you to this line of work?
- [03:47]
B
Yeah, sure. I think I probably took quite an unusual pathway into. Into this. I. Yeah, when I finished my my undergrad I started English literature and I wasn't really quite sure what I wanted to do next and I was always really interested in journalism, but actually in the UK it's actually quite difficult to go into journalism without doing things like unpaid internships. And I was always very self funded so I had to take a slightly more practical path a lot of the time and I'd ended up sort of working in. Working in video production. I set up my company initially to be more of a video production company as well, and then I made the switch into I Made the switch kind of into journalism thinking I wanted to look at tech, like, kind of like tech and ethics and I guess social justice and technology. And so I came out to Southeast Asia as a freelancer just trying to pick up some initial stories, really looking at tech for justice development, technology. And then very, very quickly just sort of started looking at things that were more to do with more overarching human rights issues and I guess organized crime and corruption. I think it's very hard to be working in this part of the world and not have issues like organized crime and corruption kind of find their way into a lot of the stories that you're looking at, I guess. But it wasn't really until 2021 during COVID where I'd been, I've been looking at my colleague and I had been doing a lot of work for NGOs by this point where we were looking more in depth to organized crime issues, especially things like illegal, illegal like land clearance, forest crime, illegal logging that we sort of accidentally almost stumbled into looking into the growing scam compound trade, which had sort of surprising overlaps I suppose. And then we set up the Eyewitness Project specifically to look at this, to look more and more at these overlaps that you have between organized crime and, and corruption and conflict and kind of what happens in those spaces. So I think, yeah, that's, that's, that's how we've ended up looking at these issues. And then even though every country's context is different, there are, there are a lot of, through lines in the kinds of dynamics that allow I guess organized crime to flourish in conflict environments, which is why we've looked at similar issues in like the DRC that we have in Cambodia for example. So we've always, for the last sort of five years we've, we've very much focused on, yeah, I guess like those overlaps between that space between organized crime, corruption and conflict rather than looking at a specific geographical area. But, but Southeast Asia is still very much my, my home. Cambodia is my home. So we do, we do focus a lot of work work here.
- [06:43]
C
Yeah, it's, it's such a long story and also like very interesting your background and also what you're doing in Southeast Asia is like all that very important and also high risky industry to work with research and all that work related to scam and slavery and things. So like, I'm also curious, like could you explain a little bit about like how do you personally prepare before entering risk research info?
- [07:18]
B
I mean that's just something that is unavoidable I suppose. And I mean there have been some scary moments, especially in the last few years. We have had sort of threats communicated to us, like death threats mostly from sort of like, more like private organizations like the Prince group for example, when we were looking into them, who were ultimately sanctioned at the end of last year. It is always very concerning when you managed to realize that the stories that you're looking at simultaneously risk the threat upsetting governments and security forces and private companies who are very powerful. And you're like, oh, we've upset people from every angle. But I think that, I think that we, we have been very lucky and I've been very lucky to have made, you know, really good connections in lots of different NGOs and lots of different, like government departments and, and embassies and, and really, I'm able to get really, really good advice before I start doing any kind of investigation. Also. I am aware that especially because I, you know, I, being being a Brit in this part of the world as well, you, you do have a little bit more freedom to, to research and to comment and, and to criticize than a lot of my Cambodian colleagues, for example, have. So there is a, I think sometimes a sense of more responsibility that if I'm working with Cambodian colleagues that it makes more sense for me and for my other sort of Western colleagues, I guess, to take some of that risk and put our names on things because we're just a little bit less likely to be targeted. And that's a risk that we're kind of happy to take because overall, overall we are just safer.
- [09:04]
C
Yeah, like it sounds really dangerous like personally what you are doing. And also like sometimes like in that kind of industry it's like people, they are controlling very powerfully. So these kind of like areas to investigate and to work on, it must be really challenging for sure. So like we can talk about cyber slavery. Enforced criminality lay first. So a large part of your work focuses on the scam industry and what you've described as cyber slavery. Many people say think of online scams as isolated crime acts disconnected from broader system of exploration. So from your research, how should we really understand the skill and organization behind these operations?
- [09:57]
B
Yeah, I mean this, this the online scam industry, what I normally call the forced, forced online criminality really is a kind of catch all term because it covers the gambling and the scams and everything in between. Like forced, forced, online sex workers, all kinds of kind of pretty horrendous types of activity that happen in some of these compounds. And there is There's a very broad spectrum between people and small organized crime groups that actively go and decide to willingly set up some kind of like scam company somewhere and people who are completely tricked into working somewhere and have no idea what's happening. And there's a huge number of gradations in between of people who may have known that what they were doing was maybe a little bit dodgy, but then had no idea about the scale of abuse they would face when they entered that industry. I don't thought it would be get out and have been horrendously exploited since and sold from company to company. There is absolutely no doubt by this point that, that Cambodia and certain parts of, of Myanmar and parts of Laos, the economy is now completely dependent or has been completely dependent on these scam compound cities. You know, they are not a separate organized crime phenomenon. They, they are a core part of the economic activity of a country. And in a country like Cambodia as well, every other major industry, you know, the housing market, like the, you know, the vehicles, imports that, where the country decides to, to, to build roads to even, for example, like all of this has been dictated by the needs of the scam industry. That's, that's not an exaggeration. It really has shaped the entire development trajectory of this country for 10 years. And there are areas of, especially northern Myanmar where I think that's, we could probably say the same thing. It also means that as well as legitimate industry adapting continually to serve the needs of this, of this criminal business, you also have all other forms of organized crime end up adapting to suit that need. Right. So Cambodia, for example, didn't really have much of a problem with importing certain types of rare wildlife, for example, until the casino and online scam boom, which is driven by Chinese organized crime and, and Chinese organized crime groups, Chinese gangsters often like to have things like, they like to get hold of things like rhino horn, it's kind of, or tiger bone wine. And these are things that, yeah, we're not really on the market in Cambodia then are being imported. When we start to look at things like the way that one of the ways that I came to be looking more like landmines and, and control of small arms is because, you know, the more we were looking into weapons trafficking dynamics in Southeast Asia, so much of that now is dictated by the needs of the scam compound industry. You're talking about like, you know, companies and small cities that have been developed to accommodate scam compounds that some of which essentially have accumulated almost like private armies. You're talking about industry that's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, this is, this is far bigger than the GDP of many countries. So it's not, it's in no way an isolated. It is the driving economic force in Southeast Asia to a large degree now. And that has just changed, that's changed the dynamics of all legitimate and, and the legal business around it.
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C
I see. Like, so within five years, like as you mentioned, like you're being doing research and involving in this situation, especially in Southeast Asia. So like is it getting worse? Like all the scam compound and all that organized crime, like especially high border Laos and Cambodia. And also like when we talk about cyber slavery, we're talking about people being trafficked and forced to commit crimes themselves. So could you also explain how the system operates on the ground and what distinguish it from more familiar forms of forced labor?
- [14:13]
B
Yeah, so I mean, you have, yeah, you have lots of different elements that are, that are damaging, right? You have, yeah, you have trafficking networks bringing people across borders. Increasingly in Cambodia especially, a lot of the victims that are coming in are coming, are being brought from like Uganda and East Africa. So it's like coming from a very widely dispersed, a very wide dispersed kind of like source of trafficking victims and, and also South America. And you know, this is an enormous global problem. So you, you on one hand, you have the issue of, you know, people being trafficked into the country. You have the abuses that have physical abuses that happen inside scam compounds where if people don't meet their targets, they're often tortured or they're often beaten, they have their pay withheld, they really horrendous things happen. And then especially for young women, if they're not able to, to meet targets in scam compounds, often they'll be forced into, into sex work either within, either for some of those scams, because some of the scams involve an, elements of a romance scam, right, where you think you've made a relationship online. So that means there has to be a person for you to talk to. So most scam compounds have on site models, for example, there for those phone calls and they may be expected to do all kinds of degrees of sexual activity on those phone calls with people who think they're in a relationship. There are also, they're also essentially kind of like, you know, porn sites and things and, and other ways in which women can be forced into sex work or they may be forced into sex work within compounds. As in like for the, for other workers, for senior managers to be able to use them. Within the actual zone. So there's like, this is just like one example of like ways that abuse can happen. And what it means is as well is that when we have raids sometimes, which you know, which are rare but happen, you suddenly have a huge number of people who are horrifically traumatized who may have no means to return home to their own country, who may then also then be re incarcerated while they have to pay things like overstay fees for visa overstays for times that they literally couldn't leave a building. They don't have any kind of aftercare and psychological care. They may also be in a position where they now don't have any other skill sets apart from knowing how to work in a scan compound. So they may then willingly go into another one. And what you see a lot of the time is that people who don't receive proper aftercare, even if they then return to their home countries, they may then end up being retrafficed somewhere. They may go into work for somewhere willingly. They may even set up their own forms of like scams, online gambling in their country that they go back to. So it's an incredibly, it's a constantly expanding problem that becomes harder and harder to deal with in lots of different ways. And it also just involves, it relies on so much government corruption that it means that you're kind of making things like, you know, democratic protests impossible. Because if all of a country's political decisions and economic decisions are designed to appeal to a very, very powerful cabal of organized crime actors who are paying the government to, to build where they want to build, to build roads where they want their roads, you're not really, you don't really have a functioning democracy and you can't have one long term. And I think the most dramatic examples we've seen are all out conflict over the last two years. So I mean there's been, there's been active hot fighting in northern Myanmar that has actually been over scam compound zones in order to close scam compound zones like KK park. And, but the war between Thailand and Cambodia was heavily driven by scam compounds as well. And by, and you know, for lots, in lots of different ways. But we've got a situation now in Cambodia right now where the Thai government is still literally occupying scam compounds that is in the north and, and into Mordar and was aerial bombing scam compounds full of trafficking victims at the peak of the hot conflict. So it, it's hard to underestimate the extent to which this industry is causing damage around the world?
- [18:25]
C
Yes. Yeah, like, like you mentioned, it's really depends on, you know, the government corruption, why people are vulnerable and they're looking for, they are seeking options to go somewhere to make money and stuff. So I also like do research online, just like checking and watching videos about how people, you know, come to Thailand and also like going somewhere in Asia for work. Then they just trap or kind of stuck in that situation. So I, I've seen like those people have a lot of problems like back home because of the government corrections and this really matters. And also like from what, what you've seen, how are people typically recruited or deceived into these scam compounds? Like maybe like through online job recruitment, something like that, or like beyond that. Also like when people is trapped in these operations, how difficult it is for them to escape.
- [19:38]
B
Yeah, there's something, there's a huge array of ways that people are recruited. But online advertising is a massive thing. Things like through Facebook, through Telegram and, and a lot of these job ads will, will use very kind of like coded language as well. So if you don't, if you know that, if you know the language of a scam, then you might know what it is you're getting yourself in for. If you don't, then you potentially could be tricked into thinking it's a normal customer service job. Because the way that a lot of these scam companies run as well is they do have different positions. So if you're, if you're a developer, for example it's called or add contact person, then your job is just finding new people to add to a scam. You might never actually ask that person for money, but once they are hooked enough or interested enough, then they're passed to the next person. They might not realize they're speaking to a different person, but then the next person up the chain has a job where they encourage them to often invest money in a fake platform, for example, and then there'll be another person further up the chain normally sort of like a more senior, usually sort of like Chinese, Chinese management level actor. And their job is to heavily put pressure on that person to go in over their head and invest more money than they have and then cut them off. And there'll be someone else who is a customer service agent who their entire job is to field questions when they are contacted explaining why, no, don't take your money out just yet, just keep holding on, blah, blah. So you, you have an entire workforce within these places and each of those jobs will recruit for positions for that job. So it's Very, very possible that you could start working somewhere thinking you are genuinely working in customer service. Right. And only when you arrive you realize what you're part of. You might never understand how the full scam works either, depending on what your role is. But it's not just online ads. There are also in many countries, especially in East African countries and in places like Bangladesh, where a lot of people are recruited by someone they know locally. So there'll be some kind of agent appointed in that or recruited in their village whose entire job is to sort of, yeah, find as many people as they can and they'll be getting paid a fee for each one of those people. Some people who are trafficked into compounds are tasked with bringing in more people. So they will start with people that they already know. And if they're, if they're doing it under duress, under fear of violence, then, you know, they, they might bring people in knowing full well that the conditions are going to be horrific for them, but they don't feel they have a choice. So there are many different ways. And a lot of people I speak to didn't know they were going to be in Cambodia, in Myanmar or in Laos especially because they've heard those places are dangerous. They thought they had a job in Thailand, they thought they had a job in Vietnam and then they're brought over the border without realizing. Often they don't even realize they left the country until they arrive at the compound. So there are lots of different ways you can be recruited, basically.
- [22:28]
C
Yeah, like you mentioned, like the scam language is like we need to be really carefully looking into it. I think like when especially you're looking for a job and stuff. So like this kind of situation is really tough, of course, like for, for them and making decision and also like be careful with those dangerous situation. But I also heard a lot of stories about people, you know, looking for a job, especially like Myanmar, also like the other countries, Uganda and tough moment of situation, according to the government in those countries have those like financial crisis and sometimes they have no choice. They just like willingly join that kind of industry as a victim. And so like I'm also wondering like since they joined the industry, the compound, like according to their conscious decision maybe, and maybe they stop there and then they don't know what to do. And people also, they try to find a way, find a solution to help them. So is there or like any cases, are there any successful rescue or rehabilitation efforts that you've observed like in especially South Asia regions?
- [24:02]
B
No. And this is actually a massive Gap. And something that I'm really concerned about is that there's not a lot of thought for aftercare. There's not a lot of thought for what the alternatives are for people. I mean, I've spoken to like, I've spoken to, you know, fighters in some of the, like the resistance groups in Myanmar, for example, who have told me that people joined like people, people almost had. The, were given an almost direct choice where they were between, you can go and work for, you can join the national army or you can, or you can go and work in a scam compound. That's linked to this, that's linked to raising money for like, you know, essentially the war effort for the, for the, for the national army. Right, The Tatmadu. So it's sometimes people really do not have a choice in that moment. Other times it is a lot more implicit. Like, you know, obviously if you're from an area that has a lot of poverty and no and no opportunities or an area that's heavily affected by war, then you are going to maybe take, take those risks. And they're just, I mean, especially right now, it's a really difficult moment. This last year, obviously, the USA dike cuts, like there have been so many aid cuts from governments around the world for community development and other kinds of programs designed to create employment. It's a really, really hard moment for everyone right now. And it's very difficult to say to someone, oh, you need to be more cautious. You need to, I mean, people do need to be cautious. They do need to be careful about reading a job ad and thinking that sounds too good to be true. Or if usually a big telltale sign is if you start speaking to the recruiter and you start asking any specific questions and then they get very aggressive back to you and say, like, why are you asking so many questions? Don't you want this opportunity? Doesn't sound like you're serious and they scare you into thinking. Because I've done this myself. You know, I've, I've answered these ads and I've tried to ask questions just to see what happens and they can be really, you know, there's a lot of pressure and it's, but it's, it's, it's one thing to say to someone who has other options, okay, well, you know, you need to be smart about this. But yeah, if you don't have a wealth of options, then people are going to take risks and there just aren't enough alternatives and there isn't enough funding and there isn't enough Support for people to either leave the industry or to find better alternatives. And that's a massive gap.
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C
That's really sad. Like they have, sometimes they have no option, especially when they are starving and having really tough moments. They don't know what to do. And. Yeah, so. And when we talk about casinos and criminal infrastructure, like, especially when it comes to gambling zones, money laundering and trafficking. So another key thing in your work is the role of casinos and special economic zones in Southeast Asia in new reporting, like casinos often appear not as side stories, but as central infrastructure for organized crime. So what, what is it about these spaces that makes them so attractive and effective for criminal networks?
- [27:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, especially economic zones. They're everywhere in the world and when they're done. Well, the idea, I mean, the whole point of a special economic zone is it has a different set of rules for the rest of the country, right? So normally that's just economic rules. So different tax, different types of taxation or whatever, you're trying to promote a specific industry developing that. So you might have ones that are specifically to, you know, encourage to, to promote like the garment sector, for example, by having more sort of like, I guess, business favorable rules within that specific zone. The problem is, is that once you start, because you do, because there are different kinds of laws, I guess, within special economic zones and it's up to each country to decide what those differences are, it, it's really open to abuse. Especially when you start putting special economic zones directly on borders, where often, you know, you start to think, is this just a way of essentially smuggling things across the border with less oversight? Right. But when they're in really, really remote areas with no real business sense, no economic sense, no real benefit to companies to invest in them, that's always a big red flag. But then if you start putting a casino in it, then that's completely insane because casinos need to be really, really carefully regulated. Casinos are a major money laundering risk everywhere in the world. Every country, when it, when they do like in, in, you know, domestic analyses of, of where their money laundering risks are. Casinos are always one of the top things. And so if you put one in a special economic zone where there's less oversight and rules, you're already basically saying this is, this is because you don't want as much oversight of this casino. And if you start, and if you have a really remote, a really remote special economic zone and the only thing is in it is a casino and a bunch of mysterious office dormitory buildings, I mean, what, what normal company is going to want to Go and sit up there. Why would you want to be in the middle of the jungle in Shan State? Right. Why would you, what possible reason would you have for putting your company there? Right. And so it becomes increasingly obvious that these casinos are at the center of money laundering and also playing a key role in the kind of like scam ecosystem itself. Well, there's like a lot of different ways that can work. I mean the thing about casinos is that it's very, it's because most people lose money in a casino, obviously and they're often very cash based. And increasingly they also take things like crypto. It's very, very easy just to put through any amount of money as, as winnings in a casino. That's the simplest way you can, you can launder money and say it's winnings when it's actually from other kinds of forms of crime. It also has been used as a way to explain why there are online gambling sites saying as an extension of the casino within a building when often they are just scams or there are other kinds of online gambling that are illegal. And there are also just lots and lots of ways of transferring money between, between jurisdictions, between different organized crime actors by using a casino to disguise things as winnings and losing and winning things to each other, that kind of thing. So casinos are basically like, yeah, the big, one of the biggest red flags of money launching you can have. And if you put it in a zone that already has less oversight, then you're basically announcing it as a criminal zone.
- [30:26]
C
Yeah. So like it's also involving those kind of like online gamblings and modern kind of technology as well. Maybe like to look into it like from a modern dimension, like technology seems to be accelerating these scam economies. I think like I'm also wondering like how, how are organized client groups like adapting a new technologies like maybe AI or cryptocurrency, maybe like we need to look into that issues as well.
- [31:00]
B
Oh yeah. I mean AI is already playing quite a big role. I mean there are different kinds of elements. So for example, like I see a lot of Dr. AI models, which is like when you have a real person, but then you map a different face onto their face and you use a lot of stolen, like stolen social media content kind of thing. And so you know, you have things like that, you have AI being used to increase how quickly you can write and adapt scripts. You have AI being used to see how much quicker you can try and approach people or create fake profiles or, or you know, falsify documents and bypass biometric Testing all of these kind of things use AI. We haven't yet seen AI take over entirely. I think successful scam businesses, which is, I mean I think surprises a lot of people. I think a lot of people thought that by now it would be a lot cheaper to be using AI scripts than, than real human beings. I just don't think the technology is quite there yet. But if it does get to that point then yeah, maybe, maybe fewer people would be required. Which I guess may solve one problem of trafficking but doesn't solve the problem of, of, of you know, trillion dollars a year being lost to scams around the world.
- [32:14]
C
Yeah, it's kind of like all the work really need to be careful like online and also like nowadays like those kind of like scam industry and scammers are I think here around us. Like we need to be really careful. And also like in countries like Cambodia, Lau and Myanmar's border regions, these, these zones often sit in legal or political gray areas. A lot of people being kind of trafficked and also like in those zones like gambling and money, laundry and trafficking. So like from, from what you've observed, like where does responsibility lie? Like state complexity or lack of capacity or maybe like something more structural.
- [33:09]
B
Yeah, I think, I think, I mean none of this can happen. You cannot. There are very few places in the world where scam operators have not tried to set up. Right. But most of the time it doesn't get to the point where you have a whole city. So you know, back in 2018 there were small scale scam operators from, from Taiwan mostly setting up in Croatia, in Europe. Right. And you, you saw these small, these small scale things like all over the Balkan area of Europe actually and then sometimes in Spain and even in the Isle of Man, which is kind of like a British territory. And the, they said they can set up everywhere but they just, they cannot take root without state sponsored backing. You have to have either at the very, very highest levels of government or at very, or at very high local like and regional levels of government. You have to have backing for this. You can't get the permissions to build a scam compound. You know, you can't get, you can't buy the land, you can't be protected. You, all of these places they rely on having local military and police protect the physical buildings. They rely on not being arrested. And we people like Chenza, who was the head of Prince Group, who had one, probably one of the largest global scam entities that was kind of like tackled last year to a degree at one point he was the personal advisor to the Prime Minister and to the former Prime Minister and to the former Interior Minister. And, you know, these people have managed to get their claws into, into government, you know, at the high, at the highest echelons. So for me, I think there has not been enough pressure and enough blame put on the governments of countries that have allowed this to happen. They've been treated almost as if they are victims of this, not facilitators who've earned billions out of it. I also think there needs to be an enormous amount more pressure put on things like airports that are allowing very blatant trafficking to happen through them. Some airlines appear to have been directly partnering in this process, knowingly knowing what's happening. I could. There are so many actors, there are so many, like construction companies and development companies and that. That know full well what they're doing because they've actually adapted the blueprints of. They actually offer a blueprint which is designed to build a scam compound now as a standard kind of building that they will offer. And there are just so many complicit actors that have not been blamed for this, especially in the private sector, that yeah, it goes way beyond. It goes way beyond the direct criminal actors. There's a huge industry at the moment as well and the kind of like the financial support for scams. So there's, you know, there's fintech companies, there's cryptocurrency platforms, there's payment platforms that are being set up all over Southeast Asia. And they've often been seen as a really positive thing because like a really positive technological development and a way of kind of like, you know, of economies seeking out sort of like new, again economies that maybe were not that technologically developed, like finding new ways to, to progress. But in Cambodia, a lot of the new fintech companies, a lot of the payment platforms are owned or closely connected to scam compound actors and casino actors. And it's become increasingly clear, I mean, what happened with what was way on last year before it was, before it was banned, that a lot of these payment platforms are actually just ways of laundering money at a huge scale for organized crime. And actually what's interesting is that like in some of the. In, in tro, for example, there were. There was a company called BCB Blockchain, which is a Singaporean company owned by Michael Douglas Gan, that pitched itself as, as, as a, As a kind of digital, a way of digitalizing a whole economy. And it was meant to be for doing things like paying salaries within the zone. And creating a kind of like internal financial kind of fintech platform for the, for the zone. Like very, very high tech. All it really was, as far as we can work out, is a way of ensuring that you completely control the way money moves within the scam compound zone. So you don't have to involve any outside banks. And then you can launder money from a scam that illegal gambling outside of, outside of that zone and into things like Singaporean banks and Cambodian banks. And it's just kind of like it's very frustrating that there is this sudden ability, suddenly there's this very sophisticated fintech industry which should be driving for the economy of these countries in Southeast Asia, but instead has been completely hijacked by organized prime actors.
- [37:57]
C
Yeah, so like these day like technology is also involving a lot in those kind of industries. Also like in countries like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar's borders regions, these zones often sit in legal or political grace areas. Like from what you've observed, like where does responsibility lie? State complicity, lack of publicity, or something more structural?
- [38:25]
B
I mean, I mean responsibility for this is spread between lots of different actors, I think. I mean ultimately you, none of this can happen without a government, either a national government or provincial government deciding to allow it to happen. Right. So they ultimately got like the governments of the countries where this is, where these, where these kind of like scam compound zones have really taken off are responsible and the security forces who are engaging with them are responsible. The police and the military units who are being employed to come guard compounds, they have responsibility. But there are also, there's also an entire ecosystem of private companies that just never get blamed. So you know, if you're the construction company building a scam compound zone and you've already built seven of these places, you know exactly what you're building. Right. I think you're, I think you should have more responsibility, I think held more responsible for what you're doing. I think if you're an airline and you know full well that there is no way that suddenly there has been an increase of 5,000% in tourism from Kenya to Laos. Right. You know, you know what is happening, you know why these people are traveling there. Like it's like you need to be held more responsible for not flagging this as an issue before. There are so many, I mean, scam compounds, they, they have to do things like if you have to buy a thousand bunk beds at once, right? No, no online vendor in their right mind is going to think that you buying a thousand bunk beds to be delivered to the middle of the jungle is a normal request. Right. So there are so many actors along the way who really should be data sharing and raising the alarm and not just profiting from this misery. So I think responsibility, you know, ultimately, ultimately the government of a country like Cambodia should be stopping this. But they are enabled so often by so many people along the way that also really should be answering for that,
- [40:23]
C
the government. And also like all the people, you know, like the responsibility rely on all the process, like all the long way from their own country and then delivering and entering to another country and moving or going somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
- [40:44]
B
Yeah, I mean that's the other thing. There are also countries like Thailand that very rarely get blamed for the fact that they are a major connecting node. Like most people going to work in scam compounds from abroad in Myanmar or in Cambodia don't think they're going to Myanmar or Cambodia. They have jobs in Thailand. And Thailand made a lot of noise about disrupting this industry. But actually they've been very complicit in, in facilitating the trafficking of people through the country, but also allowing things like Thai construction companies to go across the border into like Miyawadi for example, and build, construct and build scam compounds there. And no one is stopping him from going back and forth doing and doing that. So I think there are a lot of intermediary companies that have been making a lot of money out of this industry that have not been held accountable.
- [41:37]
C
Yeah, like sometimes just cross the border for example, like Thailand and Nyaori is quite close. And yes, you can just drive like, like in an hour or like 30 minutes and you are in the jungle. So this kind of situation is happening a lot. Yeah. So we can also talk about like beyond humanitarian framing. So like I also want to introduce a related but sensitive area opioid like landmines of an ACE Global ordinance, not in the traditional humanitarian framing but in relation of relation to organized crime. Like Myanmar also has recently recorded the highest number of landmine causalities globally with contamination reported in over half of old townships. From a research perspective, like what does the scale of harm tell us about how the conflict is being felt?
- [42:37]
B
Well, I think that, I think that none of no conflict actors really in Myanmar, no major conflict actors can continue without obviously some sort of income stream. Right. And I mean you have things like the KNU and you have like know BGFs in formerly called BGF in, in Karan State that have been. There are many individuals who have been directly sanctioned for their role in, you know, in, in organized crime, in running scam compound zones or protected scam compound zones, in moving things like meth across the border. And the problem is, is if you're, you know, if you're thinking about, if you're thinking about like what then becomes a strategically valuable asset, right? Like it's not just this city is valuable, it's also, oh, this, this zone where the crime is happening is also valuable. And then you have a risk that you're going to start laying landmines or you're going to start directing military support to protect those areas and that, and that communities that are reliant on these bases or, or more so militias that are reliant on these places to fund, to fund their activities will not want landmines to be cleared from them. So it, and it also means that if you have, I mean China and Russia are both major, major, major actors in supplying the army Myanmar with, with weapons at the moment. They also have some of the larger economic interests in, in northern Myanmar especially. And because some of those have become overlapped with, there is a real, there can be a real resistance to having external eyes like things like international landmine clearance organizations for example, come anywhere near where this is happening. So you know, in order to do landmine clearance, you, you know, you need to start by, normally the way it works is, you know, you start by working with things like education and like trying to improve, you know, understanding from communities of how to be safer in areas that are, that are mined, but also trying to improve the improved practices for doing things like marking where mines are and having some kind of consistency about that. And then you move on to things like it's called a non technical survey where you need to actually start working out where unexploded ordinances and where landmines have been left. And you need to work closely with communities and with military actors and armed actors to try and work out where all these places are are. And then you start figuring out based on community need where you clear. There are like none of those things are truly possible if you're, if your efforts to clear landmines are being frustrated by perhaps some groups still want them in the ground because they are kind of protecting their, their assets which are being used for organized crime activities to raise money to continue their war effort, right? So this is where you start. It starts to get really, really murky because it becomes much harder to work out what's actually based. It becomes much harder to gain access to areas in the first place, but also to persuade armed actors that you should be clearing certain areas if they think they actually have protective value for their businesses, whether they're illegal or not.
- [46:02]
C
Yes. Like in Myanmar, especially in northern part of the country, it's kind of like a lot of crimes and also, like, especially organized crimes are happening. And we try to look into it, like, seriously, but it's. It's for sure so complicated. And I'm also like, thinking about, like, the political Crisis Since. Since 2011. And this kind of like, political crisis changed the landscape for organized crime in the region. So, like, I mean, like, I mean, like, it will definitely change a lot, but before the coup as well, it was happening, but not that obvious, I think. But I think after the coup, 20. So, like, it might change a lot. Like the landscape. Yeah, those regions.
- [47:05]
B
Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, you know, we've. We've talked about, like, like how, you know, people get drawn into things like scam, scams because there's a lack of other financial options. Right. I mean, that's one. One quick way that war will do that. Like, war will take away other options so that you're left with crazy criminal industries as the only employer in town. But yeah, fundamentally you can't wage war without money. And that has. Everywhere in the world has meant that armed forces have. Well, armed forces or, you know, resistance groups have often engaged in illegal activity in order to fund themselves or at least been much more tolerant of it happening around them because they understand that there's no money coming otherwise. So that. That kind of. That's like war generally, especially civil war, does tend to create space, much more space for organized crime to become the main economic driver in a specific area. I think because, you know, the meme conflict is so complicated. You have so many different groups that are in opposition to one another but also forming, you know, conflict. Very complicated allegiances and shifting allegiances. And you've got so many territorial shifts. You also have to have endlessly changing negotiations. If you're trafficking or smuggling physical items like drugs, for example, or wildlife or logging, you need to be able. You need to be making all these very, very complex arrangements between different armed groups which can then in turn impact the trajectory of a war as well. Because your. Your allegiances are not just based on. Yeah. Are no longer just purely based on whether you're fighting for the same thing, but also whether or not you have to work together in order to, you know, facilitate shipments so that you can continue to pay for the war. So it. Yeah, it is inevitable that, that the war will increase the amount of organized crime that's happening and also blur it increasingly with. With the state security apparatus and with the activities of resistance groups. I mean, that's what happened in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. At the end of the Khmer Rouge, during the civil war, for years and years and years as well. I mean, many of the major criminal actors in Cambodia that are especially involved in things like timber trafficking, they, you know, they began as splinter groups from the Khmer Rouge or opposition groups, the Khmer Rouge, that were looking for ways to make enough money to support their soldiers. And they did that by clearing the forests. And then once the war is over, they're used to making, you know, an enormous amount of money from organized crime, and they don't stop. So, you know, it's. It's inevitable that that will happen. It just becomes particularly dark when it starts affecting way beyond the end of a conflict, when it starts affecting things like where you can clear minds from or, you know, what happens when those mines are cleared? What happens to that land? Who does it go back to? What do they do with it? And it also means in the interim that any external organization that wants to work with whoever the de facto authority is on the ground may be constrained. If that group has already been, for example, sanctioned for involvement in organized crime or human rights abuses, they might not be able to work with them. So they might not even be able to make an agreement with that group that they can access a certain area of land in order to clear it, in order to make it safe for the community. So the organized crime element just creates so much murkiness and so much complication that way beyond the crime itself, it can just cause huge problems with how you rebuild and how you make your country safe again at the end of the conflict.
- [50:51]
C
So like in Cambodia, like, I would say like in Myanmar, a lot of people, they raise the awareness about the scam industry, especially in northern Myanmar. But how about in Laos and Cambodia? Like, in which region? Like, only just like the border or like in specific area, northern or southern part of Cambodia. And I also heard a lot about Laos since, like, the capital, Vientiane, it's kind of like quite close to the border. And I heard a lot about organized crime scam industry in those areas. Like, what about Cambodia? Is this also like the same situation?
- [51:31]
B
I mean, Cambodia's entire economy has shifted over the last five years to being dependent on this. And that goes for everywhere in the country, really. Like, the entire border of the country is just completely dotted with scam compounds. And Phnom Penh is completely covered with scam compounds. They're building new ones all the time. We're currently in the middle of a huge, very well publicized raid which has led to huge numbers of people being, of people being sort of like, able to escape from places, but now they're sort of homeless in the streets, as well as huge numbers of arrests. But a lot of the people who were supposedly rescued from scam compounds or who are currently in safe houses have been given a deadline at the end of this month before they have to get out of the country or they reclassify, they will be reclassified as criminal. And already we're, you know, we're seeing and hearing that the Cambodian government is massively increasing its, its prisons capacity, is building new prisons, it's moving prisons to larger areas. So it seems to be expecting to incarcerate a large number of people. So I'm, in terms of like. But then the actual original spaces where, where scams were taking place, they have not really been closed down. They're being sort of protected and kept open. So I haven't seen a genuine raid ever. In the last, like, in this region, in the last sort of like four or five years, there's always, it's always temporary until people can come back into it. But in the meantime, I mean, in Cambodian prisons as well, prisoners tend to be financially useful. They're very easy to extort individually, and they also are often subjected to sort of like forced labor within the prisons themselves. So at the moment, this seems to be a sort of transfer of trafficking survivors into a new, into new locations where they can be controlled and potentially exploited or used for forced labor in another way. So, I mean, that is unique and different to Myanmar and Laos where that was, I think, just more chaos and more people just fleeing. Here there seems to be a more concerted effort to figure out how you can continue to exploit those victims. But I don't see the scam industry itself ending. All of those buildings are just waiting to be refilled. Whether it will look exactly the same, I don't know. But yeah, the industry's not going anywhere, I don't think.
- [54:00]
C
Yeah, like the scam industry, it's kind of like continuously growing, not ending. And also like in some areas in Laos and Cambodia and also like Thai and Cambodia, also like the border also itself like have conflict. So. And also like the, the army, the military actors also appear to provide protection for scam operations. Like, either directly or indirectly, maybe like this situation also kind of help lower the boundaries between armed conflict, political power and organized Crime in these contexts. So like how it happened like to kind of like the blur situation between those power and conflict and the crime.
- [54:58]
B
So the Thai Cambodia situation is, is probably the most stark with this because the Thai military has been. All of my research over the last couple of years, interviews with Thai police and Thai military actors, it's always very clear that much like everywhere else in the Mekong region, the authorities are the main sort of facilitators of, of organized crime in as much as like, you know, you're, you are ultimately responsible for deciding what can go back and forth across borders, things like drug movements, that kind of thing. And, and, but in order to make that kind of money, you need to have total control of border crossings. Until the Thai Cambodian war started, the Thai police, which is civilian and the Thai military, which is obviously military, they, they shared control of border, of border crossings fairly fairly evenly. Right. Apart from on the Myanmar border where the Thai military has, has a lot, has long assumed control. Right. The war with Thailand allowed the war with Cambodia allowed Thailand to first of all declare military military rule as an emergency, but then take, just declare that they were taking over all of those border crossings all along the Cambodia border. They already control all of the border crossings with Laos, which is mostly on the Mekong river where the Thai navy patrols. Right. So if you think about it in that sense, the Thai military has basically been able to create a situation where they, they are now the gatekeeper for all illegal activity crossing those borders. Already for some time it's been the case that most of the weapons that were reaching, that were reaching sort of like, like PDFs and EAOs in especially Karen State. A lot of that was coming from the Thai military. Like it was shipments that were organized by the Thai military signed off bloodstream as they came through. We've been told that by many, many resistance fighters and by people in the military themselves. So the minute the Thai military is able to use its position as the, as the, as the, I guess the. Yeah, the gatekeeper. The first point of interaction at the border to tax organized crime activity as it goes across the border. And the scam industry being based along the border area has really just given it even more of an excuse to position itself everywhere where it might need to take those bribes going back and forward.
- [57:34]
C
I'm really kind of intrigued. Like all those topics that we are discussing, it's really important. It's really, I mean intense of course, but it's really meaningful to talk about. So yeah, so we can also talk about like landmines weapon leakages and security risk. More recently, your work has touched on landmines, weapon linkage and security risk, especially in conflict affected areas. While this is not traditionally the main focus of your organization, how does this line of research connect to your broader work on crime correction, corruption and conflict economies?
- [58:28]
B
Yeah, so this was slightly unusual. Yeah, a slightly more unusual pathway for our work. But we had been doing work like I wrote this project. We have done some work over the last couple of years with some landmine organizations that were mapping small, like the movement of small arms, like small, small weaponry around the region and that also covered things like homemade landmines, that kind of thing, to try and understand where the main trafficking routes were and where the weak, where the weaknesses were to try and help, I guess, landmine organizations and governments figure out how better to do things like warehousing and control of the movement of explosives, that kind of thing. Right. So we kind of came in from that direction and then we were approached about doing a feasibility study that would look at really whether it's possible to do landmine clearance at scale, at any scale in Myanmar at the moment. And we already had a lot of the connections, a lot of the, a lot of sources that were, and on the Myanmar side and also in sort of my shot and in Thailand and, and in different forms of government, different NGOs, that kind of thing. So we had a kind of good starting basis for this. But ultimately what we were trying to get our head around because, you know, we're normally looking at this in, in terms of things like how trafficking routes work. We were trying to work out how on earth a, you know, a landmine organization could even begin to get to the point where they can clear when, if you, you know, if you talk to the, if you talk to the military government, then EAOS won't talk to you. Right. PDS won't talk to you because they think you're legitimizing the main, the central government by doing that. But you can't operate in the country unless you go through the, the rules set by the central government. So you, there, there are, and then, and then even within one particular area, you know, you, you might not be able to cross the border from Thailand with the kind of equipment that you need in order to do landline clearance without getting that signed off because it might be seen as dual, dual use with military equipment. And you know, you'll have to go through various different sort of government bodies, but then you would also have to negotiate with border guard forces, for example, in order to get into the area. Once you, once you deal with the border guard forces, local resistance fighters won't talk to you too. What we were trying to do is work out whether there is any kind of framework imaginable in which you could start doing this work where you wouldn't immediately alienate half the people that you need to speak to, half the communities you need to work with to get this work done. If you speak to a different set of armed actors and really I think the answer is no. The answer at the moment is no. You can't get to the point where you can be doing serious landmine clearance as an international organization because it's just so far off, it's so, so complicated. The legal, the legal framework is incredibly complicated. But what we did come to the conclusion of is that at the very least a lot of the kind of actors who are making homemade landmines and laying homemade landmines and really putting themselves at an enormous risk by doing this because you know, people were telling us about some of the methods they were using like 3D printing plastic casings using and then putting potassium and bicycle lubricant oil and ball bearings in them. So dangerous. And then if they don't, and if they don't explode the first time, you have to physically dig them up, take them apart, move them to another minefield, relay them. It's so dangerous and like. And so even just starting with some level of education about, about safe storage, about, about marking so that you at least know where the minefields are, at least encouraging people to understand that actually most of the world has banned mine usage because of the ethical issues. That's not something that's even known for a lot of the fighters that we speak to. Right. So you know, we were basically trying to work out whether or not there are some access points, I guess at least start those conversations and start better like improve education and potentially work towards doing sort of the non technical survey side of things where, which is when you at least know where the minefields are and have them marked properly so that one day you can play them.
- [62:40]
C
Yeah, like this kind of work also like I would say I can't imagine how dangerous is like all the work like specifically when we figure it out. And it must be like very, very frustrating and also like hard to find a way how to deal with all those issues and like connect with people as well when it comes to like educate people and raising the awareness of ethical issues and things. So it's such a kind of like a lot of work to work on it. Yeah, yeah.
- [63:24]
B
And ultimately you're probably not at the moment going to persuade, you know, a resistance group not to make any landmines because, because like, you know, the, the Gentle is using landmines. They, they, they and they, and you know, and they're being aerial bombed and they don't have that many, you know, if they don't have that many sort of, I guess, tricks up their sleeve or like that many military tools they can use, they rely on. So, and, and you know, like anything in a crisis people don't want to, people are going to think about the immediate problem in front of them. Right. And, and as at the moment, it's probably not realistic that you're going to persuade, you know, millions of thousands of resistance fighters and stop making and using landmines. But you could at least start with what you can achieve, which is, you know, let's think about who will be hurt by this. Like, let's think about the fact that it will probably be your grandchild, your grandchildren further down the line that end up stepping on this landmine. And like, and let's think about how we might stop that from happening. So, yeah, how do you better keep track of where you have laid these? And let's think about how you might mark them in ways that are internationally recognized and, you know, just keep better data and share that data so that these can be cleared quicker when we get to the point where they can be cleared. And you know, I just think you have to start thinking about working within the parameters you have. You can't. This is very imperfect. We're very far from doing real, real clearance. But at least let's think about how we can do some harm reduction now for the future.
- [64:56]
C
Yeah, like, also, like, must be so challenging for data sharing as well, I think. And from a humanitarian perspective, like, when it comes to obstacles, like, what are the biggest obstacle, like, to mine action or risk education in places like Myanmar, where power structures are constantly shifting and criminal interest may be enveloped?
- [65:24]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, fundamentally the, you know, it is against the law now, like Ginger said, is against the law for you to, for you to have any form of, offer any form of support to anyone they consider a prescribed group or an enemy of the state. Right. So even if you're a health charity or an education charity, you know, you're not supposed to be able to offer any form of support to PDFs or ES or like, you know, resistance fighters of any kind. Like, it's kind of that, that's already a red line. So you already have to come up with very complicated, very complicated ways of actually offering aid without breaking those laws or being seen to break those laws. And that, and that gets even more complicated when you're sharing data and information. Right. So if you are a humanitarian organization and you try and talk to a resistance group in Karen State to try and work out where they put landmines, you may then be considered to be by the state a military actor yourself and a fair target for retaliation. So you're at risk. So everything has to be kind of unofficial at the moment, which is, you know, a bit of a contradiction in terms because we want better, more reliable, more official data sets that we can all rely on going forward. But the way that we have to actually accumulate that data is very, is highly, highly, highly informal. So in order to sort of like avoid detection. Right. And then you have to just, you know, it's going to be a long journey to, to build trust with enough different stakeholders that everyone is happy to share that information with you and allow you to then share information with other organizations that will be able to use it for long term good. So I mean there's no easy answer to that. But yeah, I mean the main challenge is that obviously so many different groups on the ground hate each other and don't trust each other and they're mutually exclusive.
- [67:30]
C
Yeah, it's, I, I can imagine since like Myanmar and all the like armed conflict and the groups from different ethnic groups, like it's, it's really complicated like to deliver the information and also like at the setting it's like everybody's just like against the law and setting up all these things. So it's really challenging for. Challenging. And yeah, like when we talk about ethical issues at the ethic and assess and I'm wondering like your investigations often take place in environments where SS is limited and much of the work cannot be made public. Like of course, like data sharing and all that education and research or all of those things. For you as an investigative journalist, how do you navigate the tension between exposing and protecting social partners and effective community?
- [68:48]
B
I mean when I'm approaching things as a journalist or as a researcher for, for their witness project, like then you know, we, we have a, we have a bit more freedom because you know, I, we will. You, you, it's part of the territory. You do have to talk to everybody, right? You have to, you have to hear the perspectives of people who you deeply disagree with and, and be open to that. And I mean you have to be very cautious and careful about how you go about that, so you don't have retaliation. But you know, it's important to hear as many different perspectives. And also people will often accidentally tell authorities especially will maybe accidentally tell you things they shouldn't have told you in the process as well. But so there is, it is very, it's very challenging to go under the radar, definitely. And we had to be super careful. This, this particular project raised a lot more challenges because the organizations that we're trying to advise on how that, on how to proceed, they do need to be a bit more by the book. Right? They do need to be. They don't have that luxury so much of, of being able to say, look, I'm, you know, I'm a journalist, I have to talk to everybody. It doesn't mean I listen to them. Right. If, if they are actually helping people as beneficiaries, then they do have to explain themselves, right. To, to the authorities or if they are cut, if they are making a deal with the authorities, they have to explain that to their beneficiaries. So that's where it gets really, really complicated. And, and I guess what, what the kind of out. The, the biggest, most interesting outcome of that for me was not that it's impossible, but that you have to be so creative about it. You know, like you might find one church group somewhere that has a really good relationship with the community that they serve back in Karen State. Right. For example. I'm using that as an example because that was the main focus of our kind of case study. Right. And yeah, they might have a really good relationship with the communities that you want to support there, but they might also, for some reason, due to personal connections, have a reasonably good relationship with, with a militia that that community hates. But they can be a go between where they can talk to both. You can't talk to both, but they can. So you have to just like find all of these incredibly complicated networks that, where someone can talk to someone and they can draw on a personal connection with someone else. And you know, and it is slow. You know, it's very slow and complicated. But you, if it's the only way of getting the information that is necessary to keep people safe, or it's the only way of getting reliable data on the ground about the way an organized crime group is operating, then that's just what you have to do. Right. And I do think it makes. Yeah, it's slow. It's slow and painstaking, but it's, it is, it's good to challenge yourself sometimes to think about like Rather than, I guess, I guess that's impossible to think what possible way could this happen? And it keeps you on your toes
- [71:59]
C
a bit from my guessing. Like maybe you need to move a lot, like to build trust. Building to build trust or like making decision and try to connect with those people in a specific area. And also like for protecting data and sources. Yeah, I can imagine this is really.
- [72:25]
B
Yes, there's a lot of moving around and then a lot of very much respecting when people obviously would like to be anonymous or very much protecting people's privacy and security and you know, of sources and that kind of thing. Because once you, you know, if you, apart from the ethical issue, obviously once you put someone in a bad situation, that's it, you've burned that bridge forever, obviously. So you have to be very mindful of that.
- [72:48]
C
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, like, at a time when conflicts are becoming more fragmented and harder to document, what role do you think investigative journalism, state plays in shaping public understanding and policy responses?
- [73:06]
B
Well, I mean there's been, there's been so much, so much cutting to all kinds of actual official organizations and institutions that are supposed to do a lot of on the ground work of especially things like protecting human rights, ensuring access to basic services, that kind of thing. And increasingly like that gap has been filled by investigative journalists and researchers. My team in Cambodia have ended up working directly on huge numbers of rescues, for example, and of people from scam compounds or from other forms of trafficking and have ended up having to spend an enormous amount of our time trying to organize, organize things like repatriation flights or get funding in or. And we're not paid for any of that. You know, that's just things that come up in your work that you see. And so on one hand, independent investigative journalists are more important than they've ever been because we are kind of often having to do all the, all the work and bring all that information back to, you know, sometimes to authorities as well. Like that had no way of, no legal way of going and investigating by themselves. But also this, but also we're, we're less funded and protected than we've ever been in the past. So it's much more dangerous for us to be doing that job in the first place. So there's fewer and fewer of people, fewer and fewer numbers of people to do it. And we're more and more taking on jobs that just really shouldn't be ours, like, like helping people get back to their home countries. So I mean, on one hand, yeah, it is like this is a field that is becoming more necessary. But on the other hand it's just too much pressure and it's also too much pressure on people who have not been trained to do all the things they're currently having to do, which is not good long term either. So yeah, I guess. Complicated answer, but yeah, we need more support, I think.
- [75:15]
C
Yeah, it is really complicated. Like so much responsibility considering all the perspectives and ethical deliveries and things like that. So for sure, like investigations like involve trafficking victims and vulnerable communities. It must be really hard to balance the need for documentation with the requirement with the need to protect people's safety and dignity.
- [75:51]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the difficulty as well is like, you know, trying to not become part of a story when you're. But then if it's an urgent situation where someone's saying I need to get out of this bad scenario today, you're no longer thinking about the story you're supposed to be writing, you're thinking about how to get them out of that situation. And then, yeah, it does blur lines of what's supposed to be objective reporting and becomes impossible, I think. Which is one of the big reasons I've ended up moving more into sort of like research from straightforward journalism because it was becoming harder and harder to just be completely separate from those stories.
- [76:27]
C
Yeah, well, so we can also talk about hope and perspective as well as public understanding as we look forward. I want to, with reflection rather than prediction. What kinds of expertise or collaboration are currently missing in responses to scan economies and conflict linked violence?
- [76:56]
B
I think that the biggest thing is the sheer number of people who are deeply traumatized by what they've experienced, who have absolutely no access to mental health care. Any kind of aftercare and also any kind of aftercare that can be offered in their, their mother tongue or in a cultural context that makes sense to them as well. And you. Cambodia is a country that has already is already grappling with second generation, third generation trauma people who've suffered horrific things during the Khmer Rouge period and that's led to generations of depression and PTSD symptoms that manifest and no one's ever had any proper treatment. And um, and now we're seeing the same thing happen again with just the sheer number of people that are escaping scam compounds, getting out scam compounds and, and have absolutely no, no mental health support for the horrific things I've seen. And the same thing with people who are going through conflict in Myanmar right now. You can't, it's so hard just to go back to normal life and, and not have that affect you deeply. And that's a massive area of expertise. It's missing. There's also just like basic things with the organized crime site. There's a. There's a basic problem with having no agreed terms to define what kind of victim somebody is when they've come out of a scam compound, which can make it very, very difficult for them to be reintegrated into their communities or to receive support from certain kinds of organizations. So there needs to be a lot more legal analysis and like policy analysis to try and get. Try and I guess develop better ways to support people and to process people. And then there's also because the technology is just getting so much more complicated all the time and so much more sophisticated all the time. There's just a huge need for resources that can even investigate things like scams and, and work out where they're coming from and look at how they work and try and disrupt them. That are the need for people with the same kinds of like IT skills and crypto tracing skills to be applied to tackling the industry. As you're currently working inside the industry. I think that that's a bit of a mismatch. So yeah, I think that's probably my big three.
- [79:26]
C
Yeah. Like we need to really look into like their mental health and generational. Those kind of educations and recovery process. I'm also like kind of concerned about like people in those very tough situation difficult moment. I wish like the don't like normalize in this kind of, you know, loop getting into those industry getting back again and again and because of those financial struggles and all the things back in the country and the government also. Yeah. Need to threaten the policy and share the awareness and protect the communities especially vulnerable and marginalized community. That's really important I think. And yeah for listener try to understand Myanmar and the Mekong region beyond lines. What is the most important misconception you would want to challenge?
- [80:43]
B
I think the most important misconception from the west is that there is still this kind of very sort of like colonial view that somehow countries in the Mekong region and people in the Mekong region are. Are in some way incapable of rule like, of being in charge to the point that like everything that happens is seen through the lens of oh, is this somehow America's doing or China's doing or Russia's doing or. And it's like actually no, I think, you know, people are perfectly capable of having their own, their own problems and arguments and like, you know, but also being very intelligent leaders and you Know, I think there's a massive underestimation sometimes for. So, for example, in Cambodia is like, you know, my. Where I see this the most, but like, the government in Cambodia has done horrendously unethical things, but they are. But the ruling family is a very astute and very, very, very clever at staying in, in power and have their, you know, very much their own agenda and have managed to play off other governments very, very well. And underestimating that has caused an enormous amount of problems because a lot of Western countries, and China as well, which tends to be insanely arrogant about, about its position in the world, tend to see the governments of other countries, smaller countries, as weak and playable and malleable, and then they get caught out when they don't realize what they're up against. And, you know, the kinds of leaders who have been in power in Cambodia, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Myanmar, they have been finding ways to cling to power and, and to get what they want for 60 years. You know, and if you underestimate people like that, you are in serious trouble. You have to understand that you are up against people who are at least as. Have at least as much expertise in politics and as you do. And I think that's been a massive problem for countries outside of this region to get their heads around.
- [83:01]
C
Yeah, we need to be aware of all that concept and understanding the regions and the courses and also like, we need to look into, like, from modern perspective, dimensions and a lot of calculations involved, I think. Yeah. So, yeah, before we wrap up, Lindsay, I just really want to thank you again for sharing insights with us today. And your work helps shed light on systems that are often hidden from public view, from cyber slavery and trafficking networks to the complex intersections between conflict, crime and governance in our region. So these are obviously very difficult topics, but conversations like this are really essential for helping people better understand the realities behind headlines and statistics. So, yeah, it has been a real privilege to hear about the depth of your investigative work and the challenges of documenting these issues in environments where information is often restricted and risk remains. So thank you so much again for taking the time to join us on the Insect Nyuma podcast.
- [84:17]
B
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great chat.
- [84:19]
C
Thank you.
- [84:20]
B
Really appreciate it.
- [84:22]
C
And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Inside Myanmar Podcast. If you found this conversation valuable, please consider sharing the episode with colleges, students or anyone interested in human rights, investigative journalism and developments in South Asia. We will include links in the episode description where you can learn more about Lindsey Kennedy work and the organizations she is involved with. Until next time, thank you for listening.
- [85:10]
A
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- [86:03]
B
Sa. Yeah.