Search for words such as "Myanmar", "Wa State" and "Kokang" on social platforms, and you will find all kinds of handsome men and women, who show the scenery of northern Myanmar in their videos, attracting you to contact them for travel.
The most famous Internet celebrity is "Li Saigao", a young man in military uniform who uses big nationalism and talent shows as gimmicks. However, after he was exposed as a member of the Wa State Army and suspected of being an employee of the Henry Group, suspected of fraud, he disappeared from the Internet for a while.
Contrary to the appearance of "quiet and good years", the local Chinese in Myanmar know that if you come to the "Golden Triangle" in northern Myanmar alone, you are likely to become the party of the "blood cow" in the news, constantly drawn blood, and even "gasked".
The terminal of human trafficking in Southeast Asia - KK Park
On the border between Thailand and Myanmar, there is a place that the Myanmar government has heard of, called Myawaddy, which was full of poppies in the early years. With the implementation of the local anti-drug order, a large number of people in the drug industry have lost their jobs, and the local job market that has not digested these labors has made drug farmers and drug traffickers even more frantic.
As soon as he turned around, the villains entered the black industry such as telecom fraud, abduction and kidnapping, and the pillar of the local economy gradually changed from the drug business to human trafficking.
Taking advantage of its proximity to Thailand, fraudsters kidnapped and transported the fallen people to Myawaddy in Mae So, Thailand, on the other hand, fraud gangs all over Southeast Asia also targeted Chinese compatriots, and used all kinds of tricks to control people and lock them up in small black houses, squeeze out all labor value and ransom, and bring them to Myowaddy. Therefore, it has also become the last stop in the black industry chain of human trafficking in Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Cambodia.
The last value of those who come here is the only remaining medical value in them. The Myawaddy area is located in a variety of parks, there are many names of parks, such as Jinxin Park, Oriental Park, Poly Park and so on. From the map, the park is made up of uniform buildings.
No matter how you look at it from the outside, these are simple industrial parks, but behind the scenes, they are uniformly engaged in human body trading, including but not limited to human fertilizer production, human organ trading and wildlife trading. According to local Chinese, according to the triad market, a pangolin skin sells for more than 1,000 yuan locally, but finding non-local buyers, such as returning to China, can increase the price at least sixfold. Chinese tourists who have been deceived by high-paying jobs and other reasons, and the dismantled body parts have also returned through the underworld, and a "waist" can be sold for hundreds of thousands of yuan.
Of all the parks, the KK Park is known for its brutality.
In early 2012, the KK campus was just a low-level scam spot, and what happened here became even more terrifying as gray income became more and more affordable for the daily expenses of the army, and even enough to strengthen the entire armed forces.
Three types of torture gradually developed in the park, specifically designed to deal with disobedient victims. The first torture, called the Water Prison, was thrown into a huge pond where the water did not reach the waist, and their hands were hung high and tied to a bamboo pole in the pool, so tortured that they could not stand, squat, and endure the pain of a little edema or even festering of the lower body. The second type of torture is beating. As the saying goes, after a big beating, they sprinkle salt on the bleeding wound. The third form of torture is chili pepper spraying, which is aimed specifically at the victim's eyes, enough to sting and endure the risk of blindness.
Although the park is a place where Chinese specifically "take in" Chinese, the shareholders behind it are confused, and the power relations are all over Southeast Asian countries. It is only known that Myawaddy is protected by the local armed forces, the Karen Army, which have a 20% stake in the KK campus. As a result, even at a time when wars between Burmese warlords are common, the region has never been attacked.
There are only about 10,000 people inside the KK park, mostly Chinese from Fujian, Xiamen and Guangdong, and it is rumored that if you do not have a Fujian household registration, you cannot stay inside. After the introduction of China's restrictive policy, many Chinese sold their assets and hurried back to China, resulting in fewer staff in the KK park, and they began to find ways to catch Taiwanese and Malaysians to make up for work, and the scope of fraud also extended to Europe and the United States due to language breakthroughs.
Myawaddy often lures young people with excellent conditions such as free air tickets, food and lodging, and well-paid jobs, and when the hostages are controlled, they are placed under house arrest, during which all communication tools are confiscated, and "distress messages" are sent to relatives and friends, sending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for ransom. However, once the family chooses to send the money, it is equivalent to telling the fraud group that they can squeeze more ransom, not only will they not let go, but they will also ask for a second and third remittance, and the worst result is that the person will not return.
Relying on their own strength, in the face of local warlords and gangs, the hostages may also fall into the hands of another gang after escaping. The Myanmar triad does not interfere with each other in the activities of the mafia, and it is not uncommon for hostages to circulate and multiple kidnappings. Because the phenomenon of black eating black often occurs within the underworld, the hostages standing on the street are stared at by many pairs of tiger eyes, so even if relatives and friends raise enough ransom, it is difficult to ensure safety if they are released.
Those who have managed to escape from Myawaddy are either lucky enough to make it alone, or they can only hope that their families will be able to connect with the Myanmar government and assist NGOs and overseas volunteers. To say that even if you enter the KK Park, there is still a glimmer of life, if you go further north, to the "Golden Triangle" in northern Myanmar, you will reach the abyss of no return. KK Park is still a legitimate jurisdiction of the Myanmar government, and the "Golden Triangle" in northern Myanmar is a three-way area, where armed divisions are carried out, and there are layers of inspection by the local joint army in and out, and even the Myanmar government is helpless.
The poppy kingdom in the "Golden Triangle" region
If Myawaddy is nothing more than a group of Chinese and Chinese criminal gathering places, then the Wa State in the "Golden Triangle" is directly a "Little China". Here, not only the language used is Chinese Simplified, but the news is not much different from the domestic form, teaching is Chinese textbooks, the circulation is renminbi, and even telephone signals are supported by Yunnan.
From Myawaddy and a little further north, you will come to the "Golden Triangle". It got its name because of the fertile soil and the "triangular" terrain, which has the advantage of grain cultivation. The "Golden Triangle" is located at the junction of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, bordering China's Yunnan Province to the north, and is part of the Shan State Independent Region within Myanmar. "Northern Myanmar" is often mentioned in China, not elsewhere further north, but here. In the 19th century, under the initiative of British colonizers, food cultivation in the "Golden Triangle" area was transformed into drug cultivation, and most of the opium grown at this time was also sold to China. From then on, the drug kingdom was synonymous with the "Golden Triangle", and the poppies produced from here were exported to the ocean.
The "Golden Triangle" region is also divided into Kokang, Wa and Xiaomengla regions, and Wa State is the autonomous region with the strongest military strength and the highest independence. Its leader, Bao Youxiang, formed a 40,000-strong Wa United Army in 1989 and acquired sufficient weapons reserves. After pursuing a policy of all-in-one, Bao Youxiang gave the Burmese government a great deterrent, allowing the Wa State to achieve a political position that was not independent but de facto free from the control of the Burmese government. However, it takes a lot of money to continue to feed the army and acquire weapons, and there is no possibility of further developing the market economy in the barren land of Wa State, which has also opened a survival mode of feeding the army with poison with the help of geographical convenience with the "Golden Triangle" region.
In the war between warlords who used drugs to feed the army, the biggest drug lord of the "Golden Triangle", Kunsha, declared independence in 1993. In order to annihilate this formidable enemy, the Burmese government persuaded the Wa State to help annihilate the Khun Sa by rewarding the "Golden Triangle" within the territory of Kun Sa. After the victory of the Wa State, the Myanmar government fulfilled its promise to transfer the land of the former "Golden Triangle" to the Wa State. Bao Youxiang was pleasantly surprised to find that under this fertile land where poppies were grown, there were actually rich tin resources. After the army gained a new economic support, the Wa State responded to the international call to implement a nationwide anti-drug ban in 2005.
The measures taken against narcotics in Wa State are guerrilla warfare tactics in which troops are stationed and raided hilltops, and whenever a poppy field is found, it is recorded and destroyed. The peasants secretly hid in the mountains to plant, and the army patrolled from time to time and when the poppies bore fruit, they were annihilated in one fell swoop. Local farmers with no experience in the market economy lost their income from drug cultivation and complained deeply, while the large number of unemployed drug traffickers made gambling, fraud, human trafficking and other black industries flourish rapidly, and telecommunications network fraud and gambling industry blossomed everywhere, attracting a large number of Chinese. A set of Chinese set of scam systems in northern Myanmar that lured come to travel and work, get involved in casinos, take on usury, solicit people to repay loans, or pay off debts with labor, and sell blood "kawaist" without money to redeem themselves. Since scam companies have blossomed, tall buildings have sprung up.
Wa casinos are magnificently built, but tourism has been sluggish during the pandemic, and gambling halls are full of doors. The gambling industry could not continue, and the local personnel patted their heads and upgraded gambling into a fraud industry, first deceived people to travel, introduced casinos, and made people lose so much that they had to embark on the road of debt repayment.
However, most of the people working in the black industry in Wa State are smuggled from Yunnan, and the Chinese government introduced a gambling ban in 2019 to save ignorant youth, which states that those who do not return by the time limit will be immediately deregistered. As soon as the policy came out, the lifeblood of the fraud industry was stepped on fiercely. Most of the people who go to Wa State want to make a lot of money and then "return home" to enjoy the rest of their lives. As soon as such measures were taken, people who could afford it in northern Myanmar tried their best to sell their assets and return to China, leaving behind some people with arrears or criminal records, in other words, outlaws who had no other ability to make a living. People who can't do without this land, can still hope that they can find any means of livelihood, can only become even more crazy gamblers, embarked on the road of human trafficking.
A "Karwaising" Internet celebrity in northern Myanmar
The "Golden Triangle" is like a gray area behind the light, and countless hurried shadows that cannot be grasped are hidden in this Myanmar "country China". According to a Cambodian Internet celebrity, "many celebrities have shares in Xigang (a famous location in Cambodia)", and soon after, the famous Hong Kong star Zeng Zhiwei publicly published a video congratulating a Wa tourism company on its opening.
A Chinese travel blogger "Premarital Travel" also advised the audience to stay away from Mandarin-speaking people after going to Myanmar, because Chinese deceived Chinese, everyone knows, "You can't bring back hundreds of millions of family property, and it will be ruined over there."
Most Chinese doing business in Myanmar also admit that if you are unfortunate enough to be caught up in a fraud den, you must either find enough ransom yourself or be lucky to escape, otherwise you will have to admit that you are planted inside.
Policy crackdowns and epidemic lockdowns, northern Myanmar has lost a lot of opportunities to rely on the development of the economy by the black industry in recent years, so local gaming and wire fraud groups have thought of stimulating the mobile dividend in northern Myanmar through social media publicity.
It is not difficult to find that in recent years, on domestic social networking sites, a group of so-called "Wa Internet celebrities" have also emerged, they are handsome men and beautiful women, can sing and dance, can tell stories, make short videos of their own experiences and talents, depict the impression of northern Myanmar with quiet years, and attract potential Chinese tourists behind the screen to consume. However, some police warned that beware of being deceived, men will be "stunned" at worst, and women may be forced to work in the service industry. Most of the girls engaged in the sex service industry in northern Myanmar are also Chinese, and after losing a lot of business during the epidemic, they have joined the female supplementary service staff from Russia and Thailand. There are many beautiful girls with poor family conditions, tempted by high salaries, but they don't want to make a fortune if they go, and in the service institutions in northern Myanmar, the real amount of money that really goes to the girls after each order is 50 to 100 yuan, and even when there are no customers, they will be deducted.
In 2021, the influencer "Li Saigao" disappeared from the Internet due to suspected fraud in northern Myanmar, and at first he and the Wa State Army behind him tried to clear his criminal suspicions, such as rumors that he was a literary artist of the gaming group Henry Company, and they clarified that Henry Company was not in Wa State, but in the Kokang Independent Zone of Myanmar. But soon after, some netizens found that the suspected figure of "Li Saigao" appeared in the celebration video about the Henry Group, and the relationship could be described as chaotic and complicated.
Regardless of whether "Li Saigao" is a white glove for the external propaganda of the fraud group, among many Internet celebrities, there are also real Wa high-level officials sharing their lives. There is a social platform account called "Meimei", which mostly displays luxury bags and jadeite jewelry. At first glance, it seems that a Yunnan woman with thick eyebrows and big eyes is sharing her happy life, but there are many mockery similar to the "Kawaist-Legion" in the comment area. According to online information, "Meimei" named Zhu Xianmei, one of the daughters-in-law of the Bao Youxiang family, although she is a Wa state, but has a Yunnan ID card, lives in Kunming, and does jade business and automobile business. With such a background, she can also bear the title of "Princess of Burma". According to rumors, Bao Youxiang's son is also in Yunnan, but it is unknown what kind of industry he is engaged in.
Northern Myanmar has been growing opium for more than 100 years, and Wa State was the last city to ban drugs, and in 2005, Bao Youxiang began to crack down on poppy cultivation, and then the gambling industry blossomed, attracting a large number of Chinese. Rectify these Chinese that are crazy about doing business and pit Chinese, and the economy is hit, and these people will only become more serious. The population of Wa State is about 600,000 people, which is considered to be relatively stable in northern Myanmar. In contrast, the situation of the gray and black industry is more complicated, the gaming industry is its economic pillar, the three major groups Henry, Welfare Lai, Parkson have their own armed forces behind the support, and as long as the money is enough, the fraud group can let the government armed forces as their own umbrella. In order to attract customers, the three major gaming groups have also released a large number of singing and dancing videos on Chinese social platforms, and have also cultivated a batch of "Internet celebrities".
In recent years, due to China's concerns, Bao Youxiang has also cooperated with China to gradually strengthen the punishment of telecom fraud:
In 2021, Bao Youxiang began working with the Chinese government to combat telecom fraud in the Wa State;
In 2022, Bao Youxiang banned the "cash network" industry statewide;
In 2023, Wa held a public trial to try 18 Wa criminals from China.
In a letter widely circulated in the Wa Chinese's WeChat group, Bao Youxiang said: "We must rely on China for all the materials and technology we need, and if we want to survive and develop, we cannot run counter to China's policy." ”