Family of Pakistani man held ‘hostage’ in recruitment scam in Myanmar urges authorities to release him
KARACHI: The families of six Pakistanis who were allegedly held “hostage” in Myanmar by fake job scammers appealed to Pakistani authorities this week for their release, saying their loved ones were being subjected to “worst form of torture”.
The Pakistani nationals’ families say they were lured with high-paying jobs in Thailand by a group of alleged Chinese con artists, but are now being forced to work 18-hour days, suffer sleep deprivation and torture, including electric shocks. Arab News could not independently confirm that the Pakistanis had been deceived by the Chinese, but a spokesman for the Chinese consulate in Karachi said they were investigating the case but so far had no evidence of any Chinese involvement in the “baseless” accusations.
While the exact nature of the work the Pakistanis were allegedly being forced to do is unclear, the scammers set a performance target of $150,000 per employee, with a monthly salary of $200 for the first six months and $500 for the year after. A copy of the contract for the company, YONGQIAN Group, seen by Arab News did not specify the type of work the Pakistanis were required to do in exchange for the $150,000 target, but it did state that their employment would be extended until the target was reached, and that employees who left before 18 months would have to pay the company $8,000.
In one case, Kamal Zaman, a Pakistani who has been working in Thailand for 10 years, told Arab News that a month and a half ago he invited his son, Mohammed Zain, from Pakistan’s Punjab province, to the Southeast Asian country on a family visa to start a business. A friend of the Zaman family, Shahid Mehmood, a Pakistani from Sialkot, Punjab, who is married to a Thai woman and has two children, also convinced Zaman to send his son.
“he [Mehmood] “He said he had a great offer for me and that I could secure the job if my son accompanied him,” Zaman told Arab News, adding that Mehmoud was not involved with the scammers.
“He promised my son a big salary but instead he has brought me a living hell. My life now is worse than hell itself.”
Zaman said his son and Mehmood were now caught up in a fake job scam and had been contacting his son using “secret phones” belonging to three Pakistani nationals from Sindh who were also being held captive on the Myanmar side of the Thai-Myanmar border.
“‘Dad, please get me out of here before I die,’ he begged me on the phone,” Zaman said. “He was crying in pain.”
Zaman, who is originally from Gujarat, said he had filed a complaint with Thai police about his son’s “kidnapping” on June 12 and was struggling to bring him home.
In a separate incident, Zain’s father said Mohammed Amir Hussain from Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab was also “taken hostage” along with Zain and Mehmood.
In the third case, Ashik Hussain, a resident of Hyderabad, Sindh, wrote a letter to the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar alleging that his son Kashif Hussain (22) and his friends Faraz Khan and Sheroz Khan had visited Thailand on February 19, but met some alleged Chinese nationals in Bangkok who offered them a “good job with high salary” on a work visa and encouraged them to travel to Myanmar.
The letter said the scammers took the men’s mobile phones and other documents and forced them to work for them. Hussein’s son and friends used secret phones to contact their families back home, telling them they were handcuffed when they arrived at the facility and were now “forced to work long hours without breaks.”
Hussain said he contacted the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar after his son shared his location using a secret phone.
“It has been a month and a half and we are yet to hear anything from the Pakistani embassy,” the father lamented.
When asked to comment on the incident, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said she would forward queries to the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar and declined to comment further.
Meanwhile, the men’s families said the situation was becoming “more and more unbearable” with each passing day.
“They are fraudsters and the factory they promised Shahid does not exist,” Zaman said. “I have thrown my son to the wolves and his mother in Pakistan does not know about it.”
