Families of Pakistanis held ‘hostage’ in Myanmar in recruitment fraud urge authorities to secure release

Undated file photos of three out of the six Pakistani nationals allegedly taken hostage by fake job scammers in Myanmar. (Photo courtesy: Ashiq Hussain)

• Families say Pakistanis were lured with lucrative job offers by alleged Chinese scammers operating near Thailand-Myanmar border 
• Spokesperson at Chinese consulate in Karachi says no evidence so far of involvement of Chinese nationals in ‘unsubstantiated’ accusations

KARACHI: The families of six Pakistani nationals allegedly taken “hostage” by fake job scammers in Myanmar have appealed to Pakistani authorities this week to secure their release, saying their loved ones were being subjected to the “worst forms of torture.” 
Families of the Pakistani nationals say that they were lured by a group of alleged Chinese scammers in Thailand with the offer of lucrative jobs and were now being forced to work up to 18 hours a day and being tortured, including through sleep deprivation and electric shocks, according to their family members. 
Arab News could not independently verify that the Pakistanis were scammed by Chinese nationals but a spokesperson at the Chinese consulate in Karachi said that they were looking into the case but there was no evidence so far of the involvement of Chinese nationals in the “unsubstantiated” accusations. 
While the exact nature of the work the Pakistanis are allegedly being forced to do is not known, the scammers had set a performance target of $150,000 per employee against a salary of $200 a month for the first six months and $500 a month thereafter for a year. 
A copy of a contract by a company called YONGQIAN Group seen by Arab News did not specify the type of work the Pakistanis were required to do in return for the $150,000 target but said that their employment period would be extended until the goal was achieved, while any employee resigning before 18 months would have to pay $8,000 to the company.
In one case, Qamar Zaman, a Pakistani working in Thailand for 10 years, told Arab News that he had invited his son, Muhammad Zain, to the Southeast Asian country from Pakistan’s Punjab province a month and a half ago on a family visa to start a business. 
An acquaintance of the Zaman family, Shahid Mehmood, another Pakistani from Punjab’s Sialkot married to a Thai woman with two children, also convinced Zaman to send over his son.
“He (Mehmood) told me he had a great offer and that he would secure the job only if my son accompanied him,” Zaman told Arab News, saying that Mehmood was not involved with the scammers.
“He promised my son a lucrative salary, but instead, I have brought upon myself a living hell. My life now is worse than hell itself.”
Zaman said that both his son and Mehmood were now trapped in a fake job scam and had gotten in touch with him by using the “secret phone” of three other Pakistani nationals from the Sindh province who were also being held captive on the Myanmar side of the Thailand-Myanmar border.
“‘Papa, get me out of here before I die,’ he pleaded with me on the phone,” Zaman said. “He was crying in agony.”
Zaman, who hails from the city of Gujrat, said that he lodged a complaint about his son’s “abduction” with the Thai police on June 12 and was struggling to bring him home. 
In another case, Muhammad Amir Hussain from Punjab’s Mandi Bahauddin, was also “taken hostage” along with Zain and Mehmood, according to Zain’s father.
In a third case, a resident from Sindh’s Hyderabad, Ashiq Hussain, has written a letter to the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar saying his son Kashif Hussain, 22, and two of his friends, Faraz Khan and Shehroz Khan, had gone to visit Thailand on Feb. 19, but met some alleged Chinese individuals in Bangkok who offered them “good jobs with handsome salaries” on employment visas, tempting them into traveling to Myanmar.
According to the letter, the scammers took the men’s mobile phones and other documents and compelled them to work with them. Hussain’s son and his friends managed to use a secret phone to contact their families back home, telling them that they had been handcuffed on arrival at the facility and were now being “forced to work long hours without breaks.”
Hussain said that he had reached out to the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar after his son shared his location using the secret phone. 
“It’s been a month and a half, and we still haven’t heard from the Pakistan embassy,” the father said.
When asked to comment on the cases, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, a spokesperson for the Pakistani foreign office, said that she would forward the queries to Pakistan’s embassy in Myanmar and declined further comment. 
Meanwhile, families of the men said that the situation was becoming “increasingly unbearable” for them with each passing day.
“These are scammers and there was no factory as promised to Shahid,” Zaman said. “I threw my son in front of the wolves and his mother in Pakistan doesn’t even know it.”