🇲🇲 Thailand, China dig in on scam centres

Hello friends!

An update on Myanmar today, but more about the outside looking in rather than internal. Big movements on scam centres, more signs that the USAID freeze will devastate and a tricky one from Argentina. 

Also, the latest Reformasi Dispatch focuses largely on Indonesia’s emerging student protests targeting Prabowo Subianto and his policies. Super insightful takes from Kevin O’Rourke here.

It’s long, so let’s crack in.
Erin Cook

Thailand hits the border

This China-Thailand collab in shutting down the scam centre business is really going for it. 

A staggering 10,000 people, give or take, were rescued from hubs largely in Myawaddy after raids last week. A few thousand are Chinese nationals and the repatriation has been tightly choreographed to signal to both China and Thailand how seriously their governments are taking it, judging by the reporting. 

There is a tricky line here about sovereignty. Hair triggers lie everywhere and while few seem concerned about Myanmar’s sovereignty (if the junta won’t sort it out, Thailand will, I suppose) there are questions about how much Thailand has acquiesced to China. Thai deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai last week shrugged off suggestions the government had ceded control to China by mass repatriating as requested, rather than processing and investigating in Thailand beforehand, as well as allowing Chinese security agencies to take the lead. 

It’s all a misunderstanding stemming from comments made by China’s anti-scam centre czar Liu Zhongyi, Phumtham says. In conversation with the government, Liu “emphasised that he respects Thai sovereignty and domestic law” and had “apologised for causing any misunderstanding among Thais that he might seem like he has intruded on Thai sovereignty.” 

People’s Party MP Rangsiman Rome spoke to Frontier Myanmar following his visit to Mae Sot, the Thai town just across the border from Myawaddy and the centre of this story. He’s happy about the shutting down of electricity access to some of the hot spots, but there’s more to it than that.

“If we want to make sure that scamming operations cannot work again, we have to focus on the structure of organised crime. We have to arrest the key organised crime figures. I have to say that Thailand is not doing well in this regard,” he told FM. I am very unquietly an immense Rangsiman fan and this Q&A is him at his no-bullshit best. A must read this week. 

USAID freeze will be a new Ice Age, warns civil society

The USAID shakeout continues. I was really interested in this piece from Kate Lamb and Rebecca Ratcliffe at the Guardian looking at what it means for independent media serving Myanmar. 

ThanLwinKhet News’s editor, Su, is a legend. “As soon as I wake up, I have to think about money,” she says of losing the USAID funding. But what strikes me is that it’s made things harder — it hasn’t stopped them. Now, salaries are being paid from Su’s pocket while her team shares a small house and food essentials. “They don’t have money, they don’t have magic. But they have decided to help each other, like providing some rice or oil for their daily needs,” she says of her team. 

For Harry, a 29-year-old journalist identified by his nickname, few people see quitting as an option: “Some of my colleagues are still reporting, even though they know they won’t receive payment. “Burma is a living hell right now, but nobody seems to care. So we have to keep reporting about it.”

This one in the New Humanitarian from Thin Lei Win is comprehensive, a total must read. Economic strife had hit years ago, but donor disinterest in Myanmar’s protracted crisis has been growing each year. With USAID out of the picture, off the cliff goes Myanmar. 

“If [the donors] don’t restart the programmes after three months, we will have to cut jobs and people,” Aung Ko Ko, the founding executive director or Mosaic Myanmar, told the outlet. Mosaic looks at conflict resolution and minority rights across the country, NH reports. But it’s about more than just jobs and paying salaries. Organised civil society is always an important arm and without it rebuilding Myanmar will be difficult. “If civil society groups disappear, it will only leave the military and the opposition to shape the discourse. It will become more polar

Realigning in India

India’s deepening relations with the civilian government were abandoned following the 2021 coup and instead, a fresh set of challenges emerged, especially around border security. This nice long, juicy one from Scroll takes a look at all elements in the relationship, including Myanmar as India’s entry into Southeast Asia and its growing role in regional transnational crime. Read it! 

The ditched Free Movement Regime features prominently in the Scroll piece, and Maha Siddiqui at the Diplomat takes a deeper look. The program allowed visa-free travel of up to 16 kilometres into India for those in and around the border areas, acknowledging the long history and familial connections along the border. Last year it was abandoned during the lead-up to India’s tense elections, ostensibly on national security grounds but there was a lot of uneasy migrant talk in this period. 

“Moves like scrapping the FMR or creating a fenced border between the two nations has the potential to impact not just the border population but also the larger geopolitical dynamics between India, Myanmar, and China, and in turn have a bearing on the success of the Act East Policy,” writes Maha Siddiqui. 

Argentina comes with the warrants

A court in Argentina earlier this month issued arrest warrants for junta figures and former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi citing “genocide and crimes against humanity” for their role in the Rohingya genocide. A Rohingya activist group had filed the case under the “universal jurisdiction” principle, in which other countries can prosecute serious, ungodly crimes from abroad, AFP explains here. 

Junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, former president Htin Kyaw and Aung San Suu Kyi were all named. 

It’s a “historic step towards justice for Rohingya and everyone in Burma suffering under the Burmese military” and “also a victory for international justice at a time of growing violations of international law worldwide,” Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, told the wire. 

“Does Argentina know Myanmar? The Myanmar government does know Argentina,” junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said, dismissing the importance of the ruling. “We like to suggest Argentina to appoint their needed and vacant judge positions firstly for their domestic judiciary if they want to criticise Myanmar according to the law,” he said, referring to Argentina’s 150 vacant judge posts. Low key seems like they just hit Google News to find something because there are definitely some lower-hanging fruits if you want to go Argentina. 

Get ASSK and Htin Kyaw off there, demands the National Unity Government. They say the National League of Democracy leaders never actually did anything, unlike the military, and aren’t culpable. To which I say: 2021 didn’t memory-hole 2017, we all remember. But I do think there’s something interesting in how the coup and subsequent incarceration have softened the (very reasonable) backlash against ASSK especially. 

“However, we strongly consider the Argentine court’s attempt to include former President U Htin Kyaw and the incumbent State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the list of perpetrators — alongside Min Aung Hlaing and his associates, who are the actual perpetrators of genocide and war crimes — as a misguided and erroneous legal accusation. Therefore, we call for removal of their names from the prosecution,” the NUG said in a statement. 

Both individuals and the wider movement have sought to move forward and the stakes are simply too high now, the statement says. “Given these circumstances, the inclusion of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and former President U Htin Kyaw in the case filed at the Argentine court may create misunderstandings between the Rohingya community and other ethnic groups. This could hinder long-term peace, reconciliation, and Myanmar’s democratic transition.”