Thailand unveils global anti-scam platform, but Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia not among founding members

Mizzima

Thailand launched what officials called the world’s first intelligence-sharing platform against transnational call-center scam networks and human trafficking on 3 July, with ten countries joining as founding members while Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar — the countries most frequently linked to the region’s scam compounds — were absent from the initial rollout.

The platform, formally named the Scam and Human Trafficking Information Exchange and Linked Database, or SHIELD, was unveiled at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok during the closing ceremony of an international dialogue on countering cyber-scam and forced criminality, jointly organized by the Royal Thai Police and the ministry, according to Bangkok Post and Xinhua. Australia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, the United States and Vietnam joined as the first participating countries, along with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the International Organization for Migration, the outlets reported.

Asked why Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were not included, despite being frequently linked to scam-center operations, Pol. Gen. Thatchai Pitaneelaboot, deputy national police chief and director of the Royal Thai Police’s Anti-Human Trafficking Center, said future participation “would depend on mutual trust and consent,” according to Bangkok Post.

The three excluded countries include the border areas of Myanmar’s Kayin (Karen) State, where compounds such as KK Park and Shwe Kokko have operated for years under the protection of the Karen National Army, formerly known as the Border Guard Force — a militia aligned with Myanmar’s military junta and distinct from the Karen National Union, the ethnic Karen political and armed organization that has resisted the military for decades and intensified fighting after the 2021 coup. Investigations have linked the compounds’ origins to Chinese organized-crime figures, according to a report by the Human Development Forum Foundation.

Myanmar and Laos had taken part in an earlier consultation on the SHIELD system in January, when Thai police briefed a wider group of countries on the platform’s development, according to Vietnamese state media reporting at the time. Neither country was listed among SHIELD’s ten founding members at the July launch.