Myanmar hands over three Chinese warlords to Beijing

New Delhi, Jan 31

Myanmar has handed over three Chinese warlords to Beijing, who were notorious for trafficking thousands of foreign nationals to forcibly run scams, a media report said.

Bai Suocheng, Wei Chaoren and Liu Zhengxiang led three of four families which ruled Laukkaing on Myanmar's north-eastern border with China, BBC reported.

They were were taken to China on a chartered flight, with seven others, the report said.

This is the latest twist in the stunning downfall of the military-backed Chinese mafia in Myanmar.

And it's yet another blow for Myanmar's military regime, whose power is waning, BBC reported.

Myanmar's army, which had been locked in a brutal stalemate since it sized power in early 2021, is now losing as it battles well-organised ethnic armies on more than one front.

General Min Aung Hlaing is known to have supported the Chinese mafia in Laukkaing. For years, China had been pressing his regime to rein in the scam centres, where people are trapped and forced to run telephone and online scams targeting victims everywhere, BBC reported.

China's unease at what was happening across its border encouraged three insurgent armies to launch coordinated attacks against the military in late October last year - and it hastened the fall of the mafia families.

The four families took over control of Laukkaing in 2009. Liu Guoxi, who led the fourth family, died in 2020.

Over the years, their reign turned a poor Burmese border town into a den of criminal activity, especially for lucrative scam centres. The UN estimates that hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked into these centres across South East Asia, BBC reported.