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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Fiona Kelliher in London and Carlos Mureithi in Nairobi

‘I broke completely’: how jobseekers from Africa are being tricked into slavery in Asia’s cyberscam compounds

A man leans on a fence in what appears to be a park with a lake
Duncan Okindo in Nairobi. The 26-year-old was tricked into going to Thailand then enslaved in Myanmar. He is now suing the agency that recruited him. Photograph: Carlos Mureithi/Guardian

Within hours of landing in Bangkok from Nairobi last December to start a job as a customer service agent, Duncan Okindo knew something was wrong. The 26-year-old had sold his cattle, borrowed money from friends and used his savings to pay a recruitment agency 200,000 Kenyan shillings (£1,150).

“I felt it would be good to go outside [the country] and look for money to take care of my family,” says Okindo. “I’d tried hard to get a job in Kenya, but life here had pushed me to the wall.”

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