Reclaiming the Digital Space for Justice and Human Dignity

Wired for exploitation. JUST Comentary

By Faiz Hazman

Introduction

In an increasingly digital world, the promise of connectivity, opportunity, and progress has come hand in hand with a darker reality: the rise of tech-enabled transnational crime. Nowhere is this more evident than in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, where thousands of individuals, many lured by fake online job offers, are trafficked into scam call centers controlled by criminal syndicates operating across Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. These victims, often youth seeking for employment opportunities from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, recently Chinese and Indian Nationals and as far as Africa, are imprisoned in guarded compounds and forced to run fraudulent investment scams under threat of violence.

In 2024, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that over 120,000 people in Myanmar alone may be trapped in such conditions, coerced into cyber-enabled criminal activity (UNODC, 2024). In October of the same year, Malaysian authorities rescued a group of nationals trafficked to a scam compound in Myawaddy, a town plagued by civil conflict and controlled by militias complicit in the scam industry (The Star, 2024).

These operations thrive in the digital space powered by encrypted apps, deep fake content, and cryptocurrencies making it harder for authorities to trace, regulate, or intervene. As criminals weaponize digitalisation, the question becomes urgent: how do we reclaim the digital world for justice and human dignity?

1. Digitalisation as a Double-Edged Sword

The expansion of digital tools has fundamentally reshaped the way people communicate, access information, and engage in economic activity. Social media, instant messaging, and online job platforms have created a hyperconnected world where opportunities appear to be just a click away. However, this same digital ecosystem has also been weaponized by transnational criminal networks, dramatically expanding their operational reach. These syndicates exploit the very features that make digital platforms effective speed, anonymity, and borderless connectivity to lure, manipulate, and trap their victims.

Using platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and WhatsApp, traffickers target individuals often young and economically vulnerable with enticing job advertisements promising high salaries, safe work environments, and overseas travel. These ads often mimic legitimate postings, blurring the line between real and fake opportunities. In many cases, even verified job portals and recruitment websites have been infiltrated or mimicked by scam networks, giving their operations a façade of credibility.

What emerges is a hybrid model of violence and coercion follow once the victim is isolated and cut off from help.

This convergence of digital tools and physical trafficking has created a new challenge for law enforcement and human rights defenders. It is no longer enough to focus on traditional trafficking routes or in-person recruitment. The virtual frontlines are now equally critical, demanding sophisticated monitoring, international cooperation, and a rethinking of how justice is pursued in the digital age.

2. Recruitment Through the Screen: Fake Jobs, Real Prisons

One of the most insidious aspects of modern human trafficking is how it starts not in a dark alley or shady deal but on a glowing screen. Victims are often recruited through online job advertisements that appear legitimate and enticing. These ads typically promise high-paying positions in tech support, digital marketing, customer service, or even cryptocurrency firms based in countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. The offers are especially appealing to young jobseekers from Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries who are struggling with unemployment or financial instability.

Upon arrival, however, the illusion shatters. Victims are often met at the border or airport, and their passports and phones are confiscated under the pretense of “company policy” or immigration control. From there, they are transported to remote compounds heavily guarded facilities run by organized criminal syndicates operating in lawless or weakly governed zones such as Cambodia’s Sihanoukville or Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko region. These compounds function as digital sweatshops, where victims are imprisoned, monitored, and coerced into executing online scams around the clock.

Inside these compounds, the victims are forced to impersonate investment advisors, cryptocurrency brokers, or romantic interests and often through dating apps or social media platforms. Their job is to build trust with unsuspecting users and then manipulate them into transferring large sums of money into scam platforms, known as pig butchering scams. In this dark ecosystem, the trafficked victim becomes a trafficker by proxy used as a digital weapon to exploit others, even while being exploited themselves.

The horror doesn’t end with deception. Investigative reports from Amnesty International (2023) and Reuters (2024) document widespread human rights abuses within these compounds. Survivors have recounted being subjected to beatings, electric shocks, sexual assault, sleep deprivation, and starvation - all as forms of punishment or control. Some are threatened with being sold to other syndicates if they do not comply, turning their lives into commodities traded on the criminal market.

These abuses highlight the deeply dehumanizing cycle of exploitation, where a person’s value is reduced to how effectively they can deceive someone else online. As victims become digital tools in a transnational scam machine, their dignity, freedom, and agency are stripped away, often with no clear path to escape.

3. Crypto and the Untraceable Economy of Exploitation

The rise of cryptocurrency has not only revolutionized finance but also enabled a shadow economy where illicit profits can move undetected. Scam centers linked to human trafficking increasingly rely on crypto assets to launder the billions they extract from victims worldwide. With features like anonymity, decentralization, and borderless transactions, cryptocurrencies offer the perfect cover for illegal operations.

According to Chainalysis (2024), Southeast Asia has become a key hotspot for crypto-based money laundering, often linked directly to trafficking compounds and online scam syndicates. By bypassing traditional banks, these networks outpace regulatory frameworks, making enforcement difficult and allowing exploitation to continue on a massive scale.

4. Borderless Crime, Jurisdictional Chaos

Transnational scam syndicates thrive in spaces where law enforcement cannot or will not reach. Many of these operations are based in lawless or semi-governed zones, where criminal groups operate with near-total impunity. For example, Myawaddy in eastern Myanmar has become a notorious hub for trafficking operations, controlled by ethnic armed groups and militia-backed business elites. The absence of central government control allows these syndicates to run their compounds like private fiefdoms, protected by corrupt networks and armed guards.

Similarly, the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ) in northern Laos has become a magnet for illicit activities, including drug trafficking, wildlife smuggling, and now human trafficking and online scams. Officially promoted as a development zone, the area is in reality a playground for transnational crime, propped up by weak regulatory oversight and deep-rooted corruption.

This geographic complexity compounds the difficulty of enforcement. Victims are often trafficked through multiple countries, and the scam activities they are forced into involve digital communications across borders, making it difficult to pinpoint legal responsibility. A Malaysian may be trafficked to Cambodia, coerced into scamming a European target via a Hong Kong-based server, with funds routed through cryptocurrency wallets in Dubai. In such a scenario, no single country holds clear jurisdiction, and syndicates exploit this legal ambiguity to their advantage.

Moreover, while international frameworks for cooperation do exist, regional collaboration remains fragmented, slow, and under-resourced. Bureaucratic red tape, inconsistent extradition treaties, and varying definitions of trafficking and cybercrime all contribute to a system where criminals move faster than law enforcement can catch up.

The result is a transnational web of exploitation that benefits from legal loopholes, political instability, and the slow pace of international justice, leaving victims trapped and traffickers emboldened.

5. Reclaiming the Digital Space for Justice and Human Dignity

If criminals can use digitalisation to exploit, so too can states, civil society, and tech companies use it to protect. This requires a transnational justice approach & regional cooperation, including:

● Digital literacy and awareness campaigns to warn potential victims.

● Stronger regulation of tech platforms to detect and remove fraudulent job ads and scam operations.

● Cross-border investigations and intelligence sharing among ASEAN states.

● Support for rehabilitation and reintegration of survivors, many of whom are traumatized and stigmatized.

Towards Accountability: Strengthening Tech Platform Responsibility in Malaysia

In the Malaysian context, to protect our citizens, especially the naive youth from being victims, stronger oversight of tech platforms is urgently needed to disrupt the digital operations of trafficking and scam syndicates. Authorities should mandate identity verification for all job postings on social media and job portals, especially those targeting overseas employment.

Local tech companies and regional platforms operating in Malaysia must be required to publish transparency reports on scam-related content removals and enforcement actions. Furthermore, a multi-stakeholder task force involving government agencies like MCMC, civil society organisations, and digital platforms should be established to coordinate takedowns and share intelligence on scam networks. These reforms would close loopholes in Malaysia’s digital ecosystem and reinforce national efforts to protect citizens from exploitation.

Civil society organizations, like JUST, have a crucial role in centering human dignity in these conversations. The fight against digital exploitation is not just a legal issue, it’s a moral one!

Conclusion

The scam centers of the Golden Triangle represent a brutal collision of digital globalisation and human suffering. Behind every stolen identity or investment fraud is a real person,often a victim themselves, robbed of agency and hope. As digitalisation continues to transform the world, justice must keep pace. That means not just regulating technology, but reclaiming it for truth, for accountability, and above all, for the dignity of every human being.

References:

UNODC (2024). Human Trafficking and Cyber Fraud in Southeast Asia: A Growing Crisis.

https://www.unodc.org/roseap/en/2024/10/cyberfraud-industry-expands-southeast-asia/story.html

Amnesty International (2023). Trapped in the Net: Exploitation in Southeast Asia’s Scam Centers.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ASA2372762023ENGLISH.pdf

Reuters (2024). Inside Myanmar’s Scam Factories: Voices from the Survivors.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-scam-centre-survivors-recall-torture-coercion-2025-02-19/

Chainalysis (2024). Crypto Crime Report: Southeast Asia Edition.

https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2024-crypto-crime-report-introduction/

The Star (2024). Malaysians Rescued from Myanmar Scam Syndicate.

https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanplus-news/2025/03/26/another-24-malaysians-involved-in-job-scam-syndicate-in-myanmar-return-home

Faiz Hazman is an intern at The International Movement for a JUST World. 6 July 2025