“We are talking about potentially thousands of victims, from every single Asean country,” said Maya Linstrum-Newman, international advocacy officer of the Bangkok-based Global Alliance against Traffic in Women (GAATW).

The situation cannot be solved by one country alone, she added, and needs Asean “to come together and take decisive action. This is why we have turned to AICHR for help”.

All Asean member nations, except Brunei, were named in the complaint, which was made alongside civil society organisations Tenaganita in Malaysia and Migrant Care in Indonesia and submitted on February 10.

02:46

‘I was beaten quite often’: Victim recounts experience with Cambodia scam operation

‘I was beaten quite often’: Victim recounts experience with Cambodia scam operation

The scam networks are dominated by Chinese gangs who transformed empty casinos into houses for massive fraud operations early on in the pandemic.

Despite widespread publicity over the scammers’ tactics, security experts say sophisticated, layered fraud schemes are still highly active.

The trafficked victims tend to be well-educated, computer-literate and speak at least one regional language, on top of English or Mandarin. This means they are not stereotypical trafficking victims, according to Linstrum-Newman of GAATW.

“This is perhaps one of the reasons why the authorities have failed to protect people on such an enormous scale,” she said.

The group urged Asean members to stop prosecuting victims of trafficking or detaining them under immigration laws once freed from a scam syndicate, and called on consular offices to offer citizens repatriation assistance free of charge.

The complaint to AICHR said countries are failing to proactively investigate media reports of nationals being held by traffickers and are not taking prompt action to obtain their release, instead waiting for victims’ families to ask for help.

Such approaches contravene Asean’s 2015 Convention Against Trafficking, the complaint alleges, and legally binds member states to prevent trafficking and protect victims under domestic and regional laws.

“For the three destination countries – Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar – support from [embassy] representatives tends to be ineffective, especially in Myanmar and Laos,” said a representative from the Indonesian NGO Migrant Care, who did not want to be named out of safety concerns.

He cited the case of two Indonesian victims, whose identities were not revealed for their protection. They did not receive immediate help from their embassies in Laos and Myanmar and ended up paying US$5-10,000 respectively to traffickers for their release.

Many faced prosecution when they got home for taking part in the online fraud. The complaint to Asean cites media coverage that includes examples from Thailand, where about 70 per cent of repatriated victims have been prosecuted.

NGOs said they were told the formal complaint would be discussed with all AICHR representatives in the body’s next meeting at the end of February.

This Week in Asia’s requests for comments from AICHR did not receive an immediate reply.

AICHR is made up of 10 human rights commissioners appointed by their respective governments. As an intergovernmental consultative body, it does not have any official compliance or enforcement measures.

“In my opinion, that is the problem with our regional human rights commission, that really you can only go so far,’’ said lawyer Edmund Bon Tai Soon, former Malaysian representative to the AICHR.

“In terms of actual regional mechanisms where we don’t have a court, where our [human rights] commission does not have the powers and mandate, it then really just relies on the effectiveness of the judicial mechanisms in the particular country.”