|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By Omboki Monayo
Nairobi, Kenya: Alex Gitonga* stared down the barrel of his Chinese employer’s gun, chained in a dark punishment room in a Myanmar compound, certain his life was over.
“I will remove your kidneys and kill you!” the man screamed before firing at Alex’s colleague, whose body slumped against the chains suspending him from the ceiling.
The gun turned toward Alex next. “If you try any more nonsense, you will be next.”
Shaking with terror, he hurried back to his workstation, wondering when he would finally go back to his beloved residence in Rongai, Kajiado County, thousands of kilometres away.
Just months earlier, Alex had been a petrol attendant in a busy Nairobi petrol station, thrilled by an offer from a Thai employment agency arranged by a trusted friend. Alex and two other Kenyans first travelled to Uganda before transiting to the Philippines.
Upon arrival in Manila, the promise of a dream job, complete with VIP pickup from the airport and a sumptuous meal at a city’s posh hotel, quickly unraveled.
After surrendering their passports, Alex and two other Kenyans were driven for hours into the countryside, then smuggled by armed handlers across a river into Myanmar.
There, they were forced into an industrial-scale romance scam operation in a heavily guarded compound with an expansive office block complex, catfishing elderly Western women using deepfake videos and fake celebrity profiles to drain their crypto accounts. “We were used as online scam slaves,” Alex says.
Punishments for resistance included electric shocks, beatings, and threats of organ harvesting. Alex bears scars of electric shock and beatings on his wrists, shins, legs, and back. “Some colleagues were compelled or enticed to sell their kidneys to generate extra income. One lady died during the surgical procedure to remove her kidney,” he reveals.
After a year of horror, Alex and others secretly contacted the Kenyan embassy via a smuggled phone. In the wake of a March 28, 2025, earthquake that devastated Myanmar and left its migrant population in a dire situation, the Philippine government pressured Myanmar’s military to raid the rebel-held compound.
Diplomatic friction between the three countries engaged in the rescue negotiations, however, slowed coordination with Myanmar’s military junta. Rescue delays also occurred due to armed clashes near the compound. Despite repeated denials of their presence from the compound bosses whenever the junta generals made inquiries about their whereabouts, Alex and his colleagues clung to hope, looking forward to the day they would finally be free.
Rescue Amid Chaos: Kenyan Diplomat Leads Daring Operation in Myanmar
In April 2025, Kenyan diplomats and local authorities successfully extracted 78 trafficking victims—including Alex—from the cyber-scam compound in Myanmar, capping a high-stakes rescue mission fraught with diplomatic hurdles and regional instability.
The operation, spearheaded by Mr Galma Boru, Kenya’s ambassador to Indonesia and the non-resident ambassador to the Philippines , faced logistical nightmares amid Southeast Asia’s volatile security climate. Traffickers had imprisoned captives in fortified camps, forcing them to run online romance or catfishing, crypto, and bitcoin trading scams under armed guard.
This successful mission highlights growing global efforts to dismantle trafficking networks exploiting political chaos in the Golden Triangle. For survivors like Alex, it marked the end of a year-long nightmare—but thousands remain trapped in similar camps across the region. No official data is available for the number of Kenyans trafficked into the Golden Triangle every year.
Alex confirms that the flow of migrant workers to the region continues.
“As we were leaving Bangkok, I saw a Kenyan with his local guide walking through the airport. We tried to signal him, but he ignored us. During our rescue, we also left some freshly arrived Kenyans at the compound. They chose to remain behind,” he recounts.
United Nations estimates indicate that more than 5,000 foreign workers are still enslaved in Myanmar scam hubs. At least 60% of rescued victims report torture or organ-harvesting threats.
Rescued from cyber-slavery: Kenya repatriates 153 trafficking survivors
The fight to rescue more Kenyans trapped in the Philippines and Myanmar continues.
In April alone, HAART Kenya and partners, including the Counter-Trafficking in Persons Secretariat (CTiP), the State Department for Diaspora Affairs, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and Kenya Airways welcomed home the third group of survivors.
Kenya has repatriated 153 citizens in 2025 who were trapped in Myanmar’s cyber-scam compounds, as part of a multinational operation that has rescued over 7,000 foreign workers from forced labor in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle,” now recognized as a global trafficking hotspot. This brings Kenya’s total rescues from Southeast Asia to 231.
The 153 survivors, most of whom were lured by fake job ads and then forced under armed guard to run online scams after their passports were confiscated, were returned home in three groups via Bangkok between February and April 2025.
“These Kenyans were among thousands of trafficking victims from multiple countries rescued through joint operations with Thai authorities,” Principal Secretary (PS) State Department of Diaspora, Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, Principal Roseline Njogu told reporters.
Back in Kenya, shaken but relieved to be free, he was referred to Awareness Against Human Trafficking (HAART) Kenya, an anti-trafficking NGO, which is currently offering him trauma counselling and a safe space to start the slow but painstaking process of reconstructing his life.
HAART has reached over 100,000 Kenyans through prevention awareness programs by holding workshops and seminars in communities and schools. It also provides survivor support to human trafficking survivors.
“We have a prevention program where we get to sensitize the public on human trafficking in all its forms, and a protection program which includes a shelter to assist women and girls who have been trafficked, and medical help for those in need of care.
HAART helps survivors settle back into normal life in Kenya by providing trauma counselling, vital basic assistance, and training to help them become self-reliant by engaging in a trade or small business.
“Upon arrival back home in Kenya, we counsel the survivors so that they can begin to heal from their trauma and other mental health issues that might have developed as a result of their experiences,” she explains.
“Some of the survivors lack household items, among other challenges. We also provide some assistance for those who wish to get employed or start small businesses by enabling them to gain the required skills,” adds Winnie.
But many remain trapped back in Myanmar. “Some of us were broken by the hellish conditions,” Alex says. “A Tanzanian colleague joined the rebels just to escape.”
HAART’s advocacy and partnership development manager Winnie Mutevu warns that traffickers still lure Africans with fake job offers: “We train survivors to recognize the red flags—because no one thinks it will happen to them.”
She reveals that the face of human trafficking has undergone a disturbing transformation since the pandemic, with criminal syndicates now exploiting digitally savvy young professionals for large-scale cybercrime operations across Southeast Asia.
“Before the COVID pandemic, trafficking mainly involved domestic workers and staff recruited for menial jobs,” says Ms Mutevu. “Now we’re seeing upwardly mobile young people—often graduates—lured into overseas criminal enterprises like romance scams and crypto trading scams.”
Government data reveals a sharp pivot in trafficking patterns. Where victims were once typically unskilled workers bound for Middle Eastern households, today’s targets include university-educated Kenyans with overseas experience, deceived by sophisticated job scams on social media.
“The victim profile has shifted dramatically from child sex exploitation and domestic workers,” confirms Diaspora Department PS Roseline Njogu. “Traffickers specifically seek educated individuals—even former diaspora workers—who can operate complex online fraud schemes,” she clarifies.
From visas to violence
Authorities report traffickers now commonly recruit through fake IT/BPO job ads, fly targets out on tourist visas, and confiscate passports upon arrival before forcing victims to run cryptocurrency or romance scams under armed guard.
“A major red flag is being told to travel on a tourist visa with promises of securing work permits later,” warns Ms Njogu. “This almost always leads to exploitation.”
Government response
Kenya has partnered with Myanmar and/Philippines to repatriate victims. In a press statement, the Kenyan ambassador warned citizens against taking up job offers in Myanmar and the Philippines
The government has published a verified list of licensed recruitment agencies (nea.go.ke) and launched awareness campaigns targeting educated job seekers seeking jobs overseas.
“We’re adapting our messaging,” says PS Njogu. “The advice is simple: use official channels, verify offers, and never surrender your documents.”
Yet challenges remain. HAART’s Mutevu notes that traffickers constantly innovate to ensnare more unsuspecting Africans: “They’ve moved from physical exploitation to digital slavery—and they’re recruiting the very people who should know better.”
At risk
According to HAART data, 68% of recent trafficking cases involved cyber-scam coercion, while 42% of victims held university degrees. An estimated 80% of the rescued Kenyans held university degrees or professional qualifications. The most common lures are IT jobs (31%), cruise ship work (28%), and modelling (19%), respectively.
Ms Mutevu is not surprised that most of the victims are young, digitally literate, and upwardly mobile Kenyans.
“These aren’t desperate people,” Mutevu stresses. “They’re ambitious graduates who trusted the wrong opportunity.”
Alex concurs. “I had worked at several petrol stations and was eager to try my luck abroad, having secured a passport in 2021. I had no idea that taking up the job that my friend had recommended would have ended up in such a nightmarish situation,” he says.
The father of one still suffers from nightmares of his traumatic experience, but is slowly adjusting to life as a free man. He credits his family and HAART as his pillars of hope and encouragement.
“I’m learning to enjoy my journey to recovery, one day at a time,” says Alex.
The government is now urging all Kenyans to be extra vigilant and avoid falling victim to wily traffickers promising them lucrative job opportunities overseas.
“We urge all citizens to remain vigilant, verify job offers through official channels, and rely on established pathways to protect themselves from these sophisticated scams,” says the PS.
