BEIJING— China has executed four leading members of gangs based in northern Myanmar who were found guilty of multiple crimes, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.
The executions were carried out by a court in Shenzhen in southern China’s Guangdong province after receiving approval from the Supreme People’s Court.
The four men belonged to the Bai family mafia, one of the notorious dynasties that ran scam centers in Myanmar. They were among 21 of the family’s members and associates who were convicted of committing crimes including intentional homicide, telecom fraud and drug trafficking.
Last November the court sentenced five of them to death including the clan’s patriarch Bai Suocheng, who died of illness after his conviction, Xinhua reported.
Last week, China executed 11 members of the Ming family mafia as part of its crackdown on scam operations in South East Asia that have entrapped thousands of Chinese victims.
For years, the Bais, Mings and several other families dominated Myanmar’s border town of Laukkaing, where they ran casinos, red-light districts and cyberscam operations.
The Bais, who controlled their own militia, established 41 compounds to house cyberscam activities and casinos, authorities said. Within the walls of those compounds was a culture of violence, where beatings and torture were routine.
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The Bai family’s criminal activities led to the deaths of six Chinese citizens, the suicide of one person and multiple injuries, the court said.
The Bais rose to power in Laukkaing in the early 2000s after the town’s then warlord was ousted in a military operation led by Min Aung Hlaing, who now leads Myanmar’s military government.
The military leader had been looking for co-operative allies, and Bai Suocheng, then a deputy of the warlord, fitted the bill.
But the families’ empires crashed in 2023, when Beijing became frustrated by the Myanmar military’s inaction on the scam operations and tacitly backed an offensive by ethnic insurgents in the area, which marked a turning point in Myanmar’s civil war.
That led to the capture of the scam mafias and their members were handed to Beijing.
With these recent executions Beijing appears to be sending a message of deterrence to would-be scammers.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked to run online scams in Myanmar and elsewhere in South East Asia, according to estimates by the United Nations.
Among them are thousands of Chinese people, and their victims are mainly Chinese. — Agencies
