Ugandans trapped in Myanmar freed

Twenty-three out of more than 30 Ugandans held in captivity in Myanmar have been freed, Uganda’s Ambassador to Malaysia who has been spearheading the rescue efforts has confirmed.

Ms Betty Bigombe told this publication by telephone from Kuala Lumpur that the victims were released yesterday morning after three months of painstaking negotiations with generals in the rebel groups fighting Myanmar’s military rulers.

READ: No way out for 30 Ugandans stuck in Myanmar, says govt

The army there ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021, sparking an insurgency that has galvanised traditionally rival ethnic armed bands into a constellation christened Three Brotherhood Alliance.
“When I initiated conversations with the rebel leaders in Burma,” she said using the Southeast Asian country’s former name, “… they were sometimes rude, they complained that the Ugandans [in captivity] were lazy … but twenty-three of the captives have been released.”
The government has previously said some 34 Ugandans were stuck in Myanmar, having been tricked to travel there  - about 13,000 kilometres away from home  - on the promise of lucrative jobs offers that turned a mirage.

Once there, Ambassador Bigombe said, the “victims of human trafficking” were marooned in camps run by criminal cartels in rebel-controlled Karen state, alternately called Kayin, to scam people worldwide online.

This account is at variance with initial reports that the Ugandans had been drafted to fight alongside the rebels, a narrative she said was “absolutely not true and traumatising to the victims”.

This claim, she noted, constituted grave allegations and risked lives of the captives because Myanmar’s military could have arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned them falsely.  

“The reports were extremely annoying … imploding the problems for Ugandans in captivity," she said, adding, “They were just in compounds in rebel-controlled territory, living in slave-like conditions, and used to scam savers in mainly North America using fake crypto sites.”

The freed 18 men and five women yesterday told Ambassador Bigombe and her team that they lived in dormitories with squalid conditions where they were forced to work for 17 hours a day, sometimes without food.
Their masters, said to be racketeers from big Asian countries sandwiching Myanmar, often ordered them to be brutalised or kept in darkrooms if accused of non-compliance with issued commands.

They were hardly paid for the work, an exploitation which betrayed the promise of overseas windfall when they initially fell into the hands of recruiters in Kampala and took the long flight to Asia to chase their dreams.

Captors yesterday at the last minute declined to free a one Yusuf Lukyamuzi, who was among 24 Ugandans listed for release.
There was no official explanation for the decision, leaving diplomats at Uganda’s mission in Kuala Lumpur which provides consular and diplomatic services to Ugandans in eight other Asian countries, worried.
These include Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei and Myanmar.

Uganda’s embassy in Malaysia is a Category B, unlike better-resourced counterparts in Europe and North America that fall in Category A, leaving it short on money to respond to diplomatic emergencies and for advancing commercial diplomacy in a large part of the world critical to the success of the government’s agenda for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that Uganda began chairing in January.  

This newspaper understands that the Ugandan embassy in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, had by press time reached out to institutions and organisations to help the freed 23 Ugandans with accommodation, shelter, food and personal items as their papers are processed for a long-awaited return home. 

Our investigations reveal that Ugandan nationals are not the only ones falling prey to the cartels in Asia which, according to some media reports, are estimated to scam $68b a month from victims across the world. Others targeted for recruitment in the criminal rings include Asians, Ethiopians and Eritreans.

German public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle or DW, last month reported that thousands of conscripts at “scam factories” at Myanmar’s border with Thailand in syndicated crypto-currency fraud schemes “are working to trick people in China, the US and Europe out of their savings”.
The broadcaster named KK Park as one of the twelve and most notorious encampments where a survivor said they work with “…no complaints, no holidays and no rest”.

Anyone who asks to leave and return to their home country is threatened that they would be killed or sold to another criminal gang in a part of Myanmar.  
In the encampments, the captives are forced to target victims on the Internet, win their trust and convince them to invest in fake crypto-currency sites that are shut down once the masterminds have taken out substantial cash, DW reported.

In yesterday’s interview, Ambassador Bigombe revealed that the cartels operating behind rebel lines in Myanmar had asked for $10,000 (Shs38m) ransom to free each Ugandan which they reduced to $5,000 (Shs19m) after she informed them that Uganda was a country with modest means and could not pay.
Asked if the government never paid any cash for the freedom of its 23 citizens, Ambassador Biombe replied “absolutely not”.
“I do not believe in paying ransom because this is a cartel we are dealing with. Paying them could encourage them to take more Ugandans [captive],” she said.

The diplomat in response to our question on how then the nearly two-dozen Ugandans were freed if no money exchanged hands, said that “it involved networking with people who know [things], a bit of risk and trying to find out who, where and how I can get there [to the cartels on rebel territory] … it’s negotiations”.

She added that her experience in the 1990s of spearheading peace talks with the Joseph Kony-led Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, whose leaders she as minister for Pacification of Northern Uganda visited when it was considered too dangerous to do, came in handy in the bargain to free the Ugandans in Myanmar.

“In a way, yes, the courage,” she said, “I believe these things are possible once there is commitment … you give yourself to give people hope and freedom.”
Despite the breakthrough, ten other Ugandans whom Ambassador Bigombe said declined to share their particulars believing the rescue effort would not work, remain entrapped in Myanmar. These add to Mr Lukyamuzi whose scheduled release the criminal gangs cancelled at the last minute.
“I will continue working for their freedom,” Ambassador Bigombe said yesterday.

Sources said Uganda has registered its deep concern with the government of Thailand whose embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, issued tourism visas to facilitate the “trafficking” of the young men and women reported to be mainly from impoverished families and with no cash on their bank accounts.

“How can a country issue to a person without money or sponsor a tourism visa if it’s not to facilitate a transnational criminal syndicate,” a Ugandan official in Kampala said, asking not to be named for diplomatic reasons.
We were unable to speak to the government of Thailand for this article.  

Most of the Ugandans travelled to Myanmar either last year or earlier , meaning they have individually endured the reported ordeals for a year or longer period.

Uganda's Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja had in an inter-agency meeting in Kampala in December 2023 tasked Ambassador Bigombe, a former senior World Bank director for fragility, conflict and violence, to lead efforts --- including engaging the United Nation’s International Migration Organisation (IMO) --- to secure release of the trapped Ugandans.   

“The message I have for the world is that modern slavery is real,” the diplomat said after the breakthrough, “The world requires concerted effort through the UN and other agencies to tackle it.”
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