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YANGON: SpaceX has cut service to more than 2,500 Starlink devices at Myanmar scam centers, a company executive said Wednesday, after reports revealed that their use had exploded in the illicit industry.
Sprawling compounds where Internet tricksters target foreigners with romance and business cons have thrived along Myanmar’s loosely-governed border during its civil war, sparked by a 2021 coup.
A highly-publicized crackdown starting in February saw some 7,000 workers repatriated and Thailand enact a cross-border Internet blockade.
But an AFP investigation this month revealed construction has continued apace, while Starlink receivers have been installed en masse, seeming to connect the hubs to the Elon Musk-owned satellite network.
SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink business operations, Lauren Dreyer, said the company “disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers’” in Myanmar.
Her post on X did not outline when the terminals were disconnected.
Myanmar’s military announced this week it had raided KK Park — one of the country’s most notorious scam centers — and seized 30 Starlink satellite Internet terminals.
Those are only a tiny fraction of the number used at the site, according to AFP’s investigation as well as independent analysis.
An AFP journalist on Wednesday saw more than 1,000 people traveling away from the site on foot, by motorbike and crammed into pickup trucks.
One departing KK Park worker said the crackdown was ongoing.
“Around 10:00 a.m. Myanmar military soldiers in four trucks arrived to our site,” said one worker who declined to give his name for security reasons.
The scam centers have emerged as a key plank in the wartime economy of Myanmar, where the military has been fighting an array of rebel groups since seizing power.
Frustrated that Chinese citizens were ring-leading scams, being trafficked into the hubs and defrauded by them, Beijing in February led the pressure campaign to curb the booming black market.
The junta relies on military backing from China to maintain its grip on power.
But it also relies on powerful militias controlling the border regions on their behalf, in return for profiting from the scam centers, analysts say.
“They need to be able to enrich those militias,” said Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “But then they also have the pressure from China.”
The result is a “balancing act,” he said, with the junta “tokenistically” taking action “while actually not doing anything.”

WASHINGTON: Most Americans - including 80% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans - think the U.S. should recognize Palestinian statehood, a sign that President Donald Trump's opposition to doing so is out of step with public opinion, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. The six-day poll, which closed on Monday, found 59% of respondents backed U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state, while 33% were opposed and the rest were unsure or did not answer the question.
About half of Trump's Republicans - 53% - opposed doing so, while 41% of Republicans said they would support the U.S. recognizing a Palestinian state. A growing number of countries - including U.S. allies Britain, Canada, France and Australia - have formally recognized Palestinian statehood in recent weeks, drawing condemnation from Israel, whose founding in 1948 led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and decades of conflict. Israeli bombardments have leveled vast swaths of Palestinian neighborhoods in Gaza following an October 2023 surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel.
Some 60% of poll respondents said Israel's response in Gaza was excessive, compared to 32% who disagreed.
Trump, who returned to the White House in January, has largely backed Israel in the war and this month brokered a ceasefire, raising hopes that lasting peace could be in reach.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll gave signs the U.S. public was ready to give Trump credit should his plan work. Some 51% of poll respondents agreed with a statement that Trump "deserves significant credit" if peace efforts are successful, compared with 42% who disagreed.
While only one in 20 Democrats approve of Trump's overall performance as president, one in four said he should get significant credit if the peace holds. Success on that front appears far from certain. An explosion of violence over the weekend threatened to derail the week-old truce and U.S. diplomats stepped up pressure on Israel and Hamas to get Trump's plan back on track. Key questions of Hamas disarming, further Israeli troop pullbacks and future governance of the Palestinian enclave remain unresolved.
Trump's approval rating on foreign policy appeared to be on a modest upswing, rising to 38% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, compared to 33% in a poll conducted earlier this month just ahead of the ceasefire deal. The latest rating was Trump's highest since July.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online and gathered responses from 4,385 people nationwide. It had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

The long road to Palestinian statehood

An Arab News Deep Dive

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