Moroccan freed from forced labor Myanmar gang after paying ransom

Another Moroccan citizen managed to escape the forced-labour compound on the Myanmar-Thai border, released and currently in the custody of a migration organization in Thailand that mediates the release of detainees.

According to Hespress sources, the Moroccan will be repatriated to the country after completing the necessary procedures.

The national’s release came after the gang that was holding him was paid a ransom of MAD 80,000.

Until now, dozens of Moroccans are still detained by human trafficking organizations in Myanmar, amid calls by their families for the authorities to intervene to save them from the “hell they live in.”

The suffering of these young Moroccans, whose number is estimated at between 150 and 200 people, continues according to the statements of relatives, who say that they are “subjected to various types of torture in detention in Myanmar, while the gangs demand that they pay up to MAD 100,000 as a ransom.”

“Following the detention of some Moroccan citizens by criminal gangs operating in Myanmar in the border areas with Thailand, a judicial investigation was opened, which was entrusted to the National Judicial Police Squad,” according to a statement by the prosecutor general at the Casablanca Court of Appeal, after “questioning some victims and the families of some of them.”

Karim, one of the relatives of a detainee in Myanmar, said that “the beginning of this case dates back to last November, after we learned as families that the first Moroccans had been kidnapped to the detention camps in Myanmar.”

“However, during that period there was no communication between us, and we did not know each other, before we formed relationships and it became clear to us that this is a human trafficking and detention operation against our relatives who were lured there, which constitutes intercontinental crimes.”

Karim added, during his intervention in a seminar organized by the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH): “After collective coordination, complaints were filed with the security and judicial authorities, which launched their investigations; however, after the lack of official action in this context, we turned to international humanitarian organizations that helped us free the first Moroccan woman who was handed over to foreign organizations that initially sponsored her.”

“Cooperation with these organizations enabled us to pay the ransom for almost seven Moroccans; two have already left the detainee, while five have not yet left despite having paid the required amount.”