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Months into his confinement, Rakesh called the Indian embassy in Yangon for help. With a group of friends clamoring around the phone they told an officer at the embassy that they are being held against their will and tortured. In a phone call verified by CNN, the official told them: “You people have landed in trouble by your decision, so you have to wait.”

Rakesh pleaded with him. The fighting in Myanmar had gotten close to Gate 25 and they could hear shelling nearby. “There is one guy there who can help you, but he will charge something,” the official said finally, giving Rakesh the number of an alleged smuggler.

CNN reached out to the Indian embassy in Yangon and Indian foreign ministry but did not hear back.

Rakesh was eventually released when his contract finished in November 2023. He believes he was let go because he simply wasn’t good enough at scamming.

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How online scam warlords have made China start to lose patience with Myanmar’s junta
▻https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/19/china/myanmar-conflict-china-scam-centers-analysis-intl-hnk/index.html
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Analysis by Nectar Gan, CNN December 19, 2023
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In the end it was the thriving online scam centers that finally forced China to lose patience with Myanmar’s brutal military rulers.

The impoverished Southeast Asian nation has long been a trouble spot on China’s southwestern border. For decades Beijing’s leaders have played a careful game of backing Myanmar’s military regimes – lending them much-needed economic, military and diplomatic support, including at the United Nations – whilst also maintaining close ties to powerful rebel militias along its borders.

But Beijing’s frustration has been building with Naypyidaw’s generals who seized power in 2021, overthrowing a democratically elected government that Beijing had built close relations with, and resurrecting the kind of isolated junta rule that Myanmar’s people had spent decades living under.
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“Chinese authorities likely did not expect that the operation would result in the complete disruption of the lucrative China-Myanmar border trade, nor did they expect that it would ripple across the entire country, causing the Myanmar military to lose hundreds of posts and suffer unprecedented battlefield losses,” said Tower.

Beijing is increasingly concerned that the prolonged disruption to border trade would deal a serious blow to the already struggling economy in southwest China, especially the border province of Yunnan; the ongoing conflict could also undermine China’s energy security, as many of its southwestern provinces rely on the China-Myanmar pipeline for access to oil and gas, according to Tower.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfck8uHXfIY