Transcript of the above video: 

Boy I have got to tell you, this is one of the weirder stories I have done recently the pertains to Thai Immigration, or read recently. I am going to put this up on screen. I actually saw this in the print edition of the Bangkok Post, quoting directly from the article titled: Immigration denies Reuters abduction claims. "The Immigration Bureau has denied allegations by Reuters linking Thai officials to foreign abductions connected to Call Centre scams. The Immigration Bureau rejected claims made by recent Reuters documentary style cartoon report which alleged Thai Officials were involved in abducting foreign nationals and handing them over to call centre gangs operating in Myanmar." Quoting further: "The report featured interviews with nine individuals from Africa and Asia, including a man identified as “Oli” from East Africa who claimed he entered Thailand from Ethiopia in November last year. He claimed Immigration Officers handed him over to Hotel staff at the airport." - Okay, that doesn’t make any sense to me, but all right. - "who then took him to Mae Sot district in Tak Province near the Myanmar border, where he was forced to work for a scam syndicate across the frontier." Quoting further: "Police Major General Choengron Rimpadee, Commander of Immigration Division 2, dismissed the allegations. He had ordered a review of all entries into Thailand in November 2024 with names resembling "Oli." Of the 62 matches found, only two were African nationals - one Ugandan man who entered via Phuket, and one Kenyan woman from Dubai. No Ethiopian nationals were recorded." Yeah, I guess this is an odd one. Credit where credit is due here. Immigration, top level guy at Immigration basically said, "hey, let's do a review and see if we have got anybody by that name and it looks like no. So it's kind of an odd way to go. That said, quoting further: "He also questioned the plausibility of the report's claims pointing out that hotel staff cannot access restricted baggage areas without special clearance - even high-ranking Immigration Officers require valid passes. He also raised concerns about Reuters intent, comparing the report to the BBC documentary Dark Side of Paradise which portrayed Thailand as a hub of criminal activity." 

Yeah, what's the deal with all of these smear campaigns against Thailand recently from the West? What is this? I mean it's pretty nonsensical - The Dark Side of Paradise one where they were saying, at least according to what I have was reading from the Pattaya Mail, Mr. Kenyon has been keeping track of that, and they were saying that Khao San Road was a red light district; I mean anybody that has ever been here, Entertainment District, sure, red light district, no, just kind of a ridiculous thing. 

Meanwhile, this whole thing, I mean it sounds pretty darn implausible. Immigration supposedly handed him off to hotel staff. Why? For what purpose? And again they went and checked. Nobody by that name had come in - there were two African nationals, none of them Ethiopian. The whole thing: and then they took him all the way up to Tak Province to work in a scam centre. Why? And what does one have to do with the other? The whole thing just is nonsense to me. I was reading that in the print edition; I was like yeah, I have got to make a video on this because this is just so outlandish, it's almost to the point of absurd. And I don't understand a cartoon, they said a ‘documentary style cartoon report’. I mean I don't even know what that is at the end of the day. Is that like Looney Tunes meets Ted Koppel?

That said, I haven't heard anything on this. I'll try to do a little bit more analysis and see what's going on and certainly update folks on this channel if I find anything as and when it may evolve, and we may have something to report.