Myanmar’s KK Park ‘Crackdown’ Exposed as Propaganda: Core Scam Infrastructure Intact
Myanmar’s military is loudly proclaiming its “fight against scammers,” detonating buildings inside the notorious KK Park complex on the Thai border. Yet satellite imagery and expert assessments reveal that the destruction affects only a small fraction of the vast enclave, and the operation increasingly resembles a polished propaganda spectacle rather than a genuine dismantling of the cyberfraud and human-trafficking industry.
High-resolution satellite photographs of KK Park, reviewed by human-rights monitors, show that several buildings on the eastern edge of the compound have indeed been reduced to heaps of shattered concrete and twisted rebar, with visible blast marks and collapses. But hundreds of other structures sprawling across the immense site remain untouched. According to experts, the core infrastructure enabling large-scale scamming operations is essentially intact.
“The junta is presenting this as though they are leveling the entire camp, but what we actually see is confined to a single section,” says Eric Heinz, an analyst with the international human-rights organization International Justice Mission. He stresses that behind the sweeping declarations, independent monitoring is vital: only then can one determine whether the authorities are truly dismantling a criminal network, rather than staging a theatrical display.
Over the past few years, KK Park has evolved into one of Myanmar’s largest and most infamous hubs of cyberfraud. Just five years ago, the area outside Myawaddy was little more than farmland; now it has metastasized into a city-within-a-city: hundreds of buildings, thousands of people lured under false promises of lucrative employment, stripped of their passports, and forced to deceive victims around the world for endless hours. Attempts to refuse participation often lead to beatings, torture, and threats.
According to the military administration, it has been conducting raids inside KK Park since mid-October and in the neighboring Shwe Kokko complex — associated with telecom scams and illegal gambling — since November. Myanmar’s Ministry of Information claims that 237 of 635 “illegal” buildings in KK Park have been demolished, and that 1,847 “unregistered foreigners” have been detained. Officials also boast of seizing more than 3,000 computers, 21,000 mobile phones, and 102 Starlink satellite terminals.
Human-rights advocates, however, doubt that this amounts to a true blow against the industry. “All the key buildings essential to running the scam operations remain intact and ready for use,” says Michelle B. Moore, head of the Thai charity Global Alms, which works with trafficking victims in Myanmar. “The authorities are crafting a pretty picture, showcasing that they are ostensibly cracking down on scam compounds and human trafficking. But the primary beneficiaries — the bosses and managers of these criminal networks — have already quietly fled.”
State television, meanwhile, airs lengthy segments on the supposed “crackdown on crime”: explosions ripping through buildings, heavy machinery at work, uniformed crews clearing rubble. Some clips show rollers crushing thousands of smartphones and computers. Jason Tower of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimates that roughly 20,000 devices were destroyed in this manner. He emphasizes that this is not merely theatrical — it also represents a catastrophic loss of potential evidence: logs, messages, and financial trails that could have led investigators to the masterminds of these global schemes.
Across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, similar compounds have, over the last decade, developed into a vast shadow market, often controlled by groups linked to Chinese organized crime. People are recruited with promises of high salaries, then imprisoned, stripped of identification, and forced into nonstop scamming — from basic investment fraud to sophisticated cryptocurrency cons. These “fraud factories” have already generated billions of dollars for criminal syndicates.
The backdrop to all this is mounting international pressure on Myanmar’s junta. The United States recently established the Scam Center Strike Force, targeting organizations and infrastructure connected to such camps — including armed groups that support the military regime and, according to Washington, profit from the criminal enterprise. China, for its part, extradited one alleged scam-center “boss” and sentenced several figures in a major case to death. At the same time, the junta is preparing for widely criticized elections in December and clearly needs polished narratives of “restoring order.”
“New sanctions have cornered the military, and they must now demonstrate that they are doing something in response. But this remains, fundamentally, a propaganda campaign,” says Moore. She adds that people remain trapped in camps, some too terrified to attempt escape even after the criminal bosses have fled. Others continue to be held under guard and simply are not allowed to leave the compounds.
Against this backdrop, Tower notes that far more consequential has been the rising activity of armed resistance groups opposing the junta. He highlights the example of the Karen National Liberation Army, which recently seized one such camp on its own initiative. According to him, this is the first instance in the Karen border region where resistance forces have openly moved to suppress scam compounds and incorporated that mission into their revolutionary agenda.
Experts emphasize that if people are truly being liberated from these camps, what happens next is just as crucial as the raids themselves. “It is essential that every individual undergo full identification as a potential victim of human trafficking,” says Heinz. “Only then will survivors receive protection and access to justice, and only then can their testimonies help dismantle trafficking networks and prevent future crimes.” Otherwise, former captives risk being miscast as offenders, and invaluable firsthand evidence of how these global fraud factories operate may be lost forever.
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