GENEVA:

The United Nations on Friday called on governments to clamp down on scam centres, which have mushroomed in Southeast Asia with hundreds of thousands of people trafficked into forced labour.

The UN human rights office released a report documenting torture, sexual abuse, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement and other abuses.

“The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking,” said UN rights chief Volker Turk, urging governments to act against corruption that is “deeply entrenched in such lucrative scamming operations, and to prosecute the criminal syndicates behind them”.

His office had said in a 2023 report that hundreds of thousands of people were forced to work in the centres, which other investigations have found are responsible for billions of dollars of online fraud.