Thailand pushing to repatriate foreigners rescued from Myanmar scam centres

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is working with authorities in the capital cities or embassies of some countries that have citizens stuck on the Thai-Myanmar border following their rescue from scam compounds to hasten their repatriation, an official said on Thursday.

About 7,000 people pulled out of scam centres in Myanmar's Myawaddy are currently housed in camps administered by armed groups operating along the frontier, following a multi-national crackdown to dismantle the illegal compounds.

The Myawaddy scam centres are part of a network of such compounds across Southeast Asia, where criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people to help generate illicit revenues running into billions of dollars a year, according to the United Nations.

Workers in such centres, many of whom say they have been coerced, engage in online scams to defraud victims worldwide.

Countries such as China and Indonesia have already repatriated some of their citizens from Myawaddy with the assistance of Thai authorities, but thousands still remain in the area, including those from African nations that do not have an embassy in Thailand.

On Thursday, the first of 19 China-bound repatriation flights planned this week for nearly 1,500 Chinese nationals rescued from Myawaddy took off from the Thai border town of Mae Sot.   

For those countries without a local mission, Thailand's foreign ministry has been in contact with an accredited embassy or the capital directly, said ministry spokesman Nikorndej Balankura.

"It is up to the receiving government whether they will send officials from their embassies to fly into Thailand or send people from their respective capitals," he told reporters at a briefing in Bangkok.

Thailand requires any country repatriating its citizens from Myawaddy to send officials to the Thai-Myanmar border to facilitate the process, which includes disease screening and immigration checks.

Hundreds of foreign nationals extricated from the scam compounds have little food, scant healthcare and filthy toilets in a remote militia camp they have been taken to.

Some detainees from African nations currently housed in that camp told Reuters last week that they also do not have the means to buy tickets to return home.

(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Panarat Thepgumpanat in Bangkok and Artorn Pookasook in Mae Sot, Thailand; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Alex Richardson)