Senator Risch questions Ambassador Cindy Dyer
Full video: EXAMINING U.S. AND GLOBAL COMMITMENTS TO COMBATTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING @ https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/examining-us-and-global-commitments-to-combatting-human-trafficking
Download Testimoney: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/06/22/2023/062223_dyer_testimony2
Madam ambassador, you, you described the situation with scam operations particularly in Asia. and the forced criminality, I I guess we don't usually think of of that sort of thing when we think of human trafficking obviously, the intersection of those two is is interesting. Could, could you give us some specific examples of how that worksso we can kind of think about this a little more clearly.
Thank you so much for that question because it is a really emerging issue that is of critical importance for us to better get our arms around.What we are seeing happening is that there are frequently Chinese criminal gangs that are behind this. They are posting job opportunities on Facebook and other social media places that appear to be legitimate and in China or in other places, they are posting these in all over the world. We've identified victims from 35 countries many times. They are from the Philippines and Malaysia, Indonesia. But we have identified individuals from Japan, the United States, the UK.
So that's, that's where I get a little confused.How do they enslave someone an ocean away from them. How, how do they do this? Is it, they post the job, the individual accepts the job.
They are frequently transiting through Thailand or Cambodia. Frequently they're going to these compounds. A lot of these are left over empty buildings from COVID. They are, they are frequently located in Cambodia in Burma across the border from Thailand. Individuals think they're going for a legitimate it job that is going to utilize their skills, linguistic skills, it skills when they get, they, they are literally locked in a room and they are not allowed to leave and they are given a quota of how much money they have to get from scam operations. And if they don't make that quota, they are tortured, they are deprived of food and water. And so they are under intense pressure to meet this quota. Some of these reasons we know how this is happening.Some of them are have escaped to tell us about it.
There was recently and this was actually in the news a a cyber scam compound in the Philippines where more than 1000 individuals were located and freed, but they were from all over. As we said, 35 countries targeting a unique population that isn't normally what we think of as the target or vulnerable to trafficking because these are people with education, linguistic skills and often it skills.