While statistics from UNCLAC show the rate of femicide in Mexico has declined over the past three years, it remains a pronounced and often silent issue due to underreporting, say experts.
“This job is going on in a lot of places – Thailand, Laos, Myanmar. They were OK because they got paid. They had experience and they knew what they were doing,” he added.‘What are we here for? Money!’
High-school graduate Jojo said she was working as a maid in Kampala, Uganda, when she received a message on the Telegram messaging app about an opportunity in Asia that involved being sponsored to do computer studies as part of a job in IT.“I was so excited,” Jojo recounted, “I told my mum about the offer.”Jojo told how she was sent an airline ticket, and described how multiple people met her along the way as she journeyed from Kampala to Laos. Eventually Jojo arrived in the same scam operation as Khobby.
She described an atmosphere similar to a fast-paced sales centre, with Chinese bosses shouting encouragement when a victim had been ‘butchered’ and their money stolen, telling how she witnessed people scammed for as much as $200,000.“They would shout a lot, in Chinese – ‘What are we here for? Money!’”
On top of adrenaline, the scam operation also ran on fear, Jojo said.
Workers were beaten if they did not meet targets for swindling money. Mostly locked inside the building where she worked and lived; Jojo said she was only able to leave the scam operation once in the four months she was in the GTSEZ, and that was to attend a local hospital after falling ill.Instead, it tapped the
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation(GHF), a United States-backed nonprofit, to lead the effort.
“There were a lot of questions raised, even within the Israeli government, about how exactly this was going to operate,” said Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan.“Now, as you can see here, the private company that was put in place to distribute this aid has completely lost control.”