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Yeah, I saw that, too. If they refuse, they claimed that they are going to be "harvested" of cornea, plasma, kidney, etc. What I don't understand is that they s

Yeah, I saw that, too. If they refuse, they claimed that they are going to be "harvested" of cornea, plasma, kidney, etc. What I don't understand is that they said they were threatened to be taken to international water for organ harvesting procedures, but was that even necessary? Those camps are pretty criminal already, seems to be an unnecessary extra step.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago
That sounds very much like the plot of Animal World! To be honest, it doesn't all add up for me as simply described: offices where multiple people suddenly vanish seem unlikely to escape notice back home, unless they're excellent at picking people without any support network to report them missing. But maybe there's more to it than the simple description. And there is an enormous supply of migrant workers in cities without friends or families to come looking until it's to late, so I suppose it could happen. Or maybe it's garbled in the transmission and the jobs are all actually out of the country, but they don't spring the trap instantly when you walk in But at least it seems not to be simply little scammers tricked by bigger, eviller ones, but rather they really have people who were genuinely looking for at least fairly honest work being ensnared.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  From other accounts, people back home are generally too poor to come looking. These people have to smuggle themselves out of their own country, then maintain a presence illegally abroad, then run an amateur investigation. It just doesn't work out like that.
  - WeylandYutani 3y ago
    I live in a rich European country and every once in a while they find some poor smucks forced to pick asparagus at a farm or have sex with a dozen men a day in a hotel. It gets a little column in a newspaper. It's really not that hard to make people drop off the grid in an uncaring world.
derefr 3y ago
My understanding — which mostly comes from reading about the "scam centers" operating in the Laos "golden triangle" autonomous region specifically — is that everything happening there is either "legal" or "unprosecutable" due to jurisdictional problems. If a Chinese-owned-and-operated company has a bunch of illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Thailand and Cambodia (but no Laotians!) locked up in a "scam center" in a Laotian AR... then which police force has both the motivation and the right to come knocking, without that being an international incident and potential incitement to another territorial war in the region that nobody wants? Laotian police have been quoted as saying that they have full authority to come into the autonomous region to investigate a crime, given irrefutable evidence of a crime — but that they can't come in without such evidence; and that it's very hard for them to get such evidence. I'm guessing that by "crime", here, they probably mean "a felony" (or whatever the Laotian equivalent is) — which is likely the blocker for them, and probably the basis for the very thin line that these criminal gangs are treading. I believe that "an escapee who can show that their organs had been harvested" would be irrefutable evidence, enough for a police raid; while "an escapee who told a story about being held captive for years" would not. (And re: the other part, of some of the things happening there being "legal" — a large part of how these companies work is by indentured servitude, in the literal sense: they get people coming there to sign contracts for provision of services and equipment, that create a debt owed by the worker to the service/equipment-provider; and then they don't let them leave until they work it off. These contracts seem to have a lot of power for the gangs; they don't bother to chase escapees who haven't signed them, while considering people who have signed them to be "theirs to keep." Presumably, they've tested these contracts with local law-in-practice, and found that they actually work as a shield for what they're doing.)
whimsicalism 3y ago
I am sure that there are terrible human rights abuses as outlined in the parent article, but I think it is also true that the media loves to jump on stories like these and exaggerates things. See for instance CNN reporting that Kim Jong Un had his uncle torn apart by a pack of dogs. Generally once organ harvesting starts coming in to play, one should put on a very skeptical hat, while there is evidence that this has happened among some prisoners in China, I think one should remain skeptical on first-read of such claims.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

That sounds very much like the plot of Animal World! To be honest, it doesn't all add up for me as simply described: offices where multiple people suddenly vanish seem unlikely to escape notice back home, unless they're excellent at picking people without any support network to report them missing. But maybe there's more to it than the simple description. And there is an enormous supply of migrant workers in cities without friends or families to come looking until it's to late, so I suppose it could happen. Or maybe it's garbled in the transmission and the jobs are all actually out of the country, but they don't spring the trap instantly when you walk in But at least it seems not to be simply little scammers tricked by bigger, eviller ones, but rather they really have people who were genuinely looking for at least fairly honest work being ensnared.

jstarfish 3y ago
From other accounts, people back home are generally too poor to come looking. These people have to smuggle themselves out of their own country, then maintain a presence illegally abroad, then run an amateur investigation. It just doesn't work out like that.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  I live in a rich European country and every once in a while they find some poor smucks forced to pick asparagus at a farm or have sex with a dozen men a day in a hotel. It gets a little column in a newspaper. It's really not that hard to make people drop off the grid in an uncaring world.

derefr 3y ago

My understanding — which mostly comes from reading about the "scam centers" operating in the Laos "golden triangle" autonomous region specifically — is that everything happening there is either "legal" or "unprosecutable" due to jurisdictional problems. If a Chinese-owned-and-operated company has a bunch of illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Thailand and Cambodia (but no Laotians!) locked up in a "scam center" in a Laotian AR... then which police force has both the motivation and the right to come knocking, without that being an international incident and potential incitement to another territorial war in the region that nobody wants? Laotian police have been quoted as saying that they have full authority to come into the autonomous region to investigate a crime, given irrefutable evidence of a crime — but that they can't come in without such evidence; and that it's very hard for them to get such evidence. I'm guessing that by "crime", here, they probably mean "a felony" (or whatever the Laotian equivalent is) — which is likely the blocker for them, and probably the basis for the very thin line that these criminal gangs are treading. I believe that "an escapee who can show that their organs had been harvested" would be irrefutable evidence, enough for a police raid; while "an escapee who told a story about being held captive for years" would not. (And re: the other part, of some of the things happening there being "legal" — a large part of how these companies work is by indentured servitude, in the literal sense: they get people coming there to sign contracts for provision of services and equipment, that create a debt owed by the worker to the service/equipment-provider; and then they don't let them leave until they work it off. These contracts seem to have a lot of power for the gangs; they don't bother to chase escapees who haven't signed them, while considering people who have signed them to be "theirs to keep." Presumably, they've tested these contracts with local law-in-practice, and found that they actually work as a shield for what they're doing.)

whimsicalism 3y ago

I am sure that there are terrible human rights abuses as outlined in the parent article, but I think it is also true that the media loves to jump on stories like these and exaggerates things. See for instance CNN reporting that Kim Jong Un had his uncle torn apart by a pack of dogs. Generally once organ harvesting starts coming in to play, one should put on a very skeptical hat, while there is evidence that this has happened among some prisoners in China, I think one should remain skeptical on first-read of such claims.