False: Photo shows a Thai woman killed in 2019, not a Taiwanese victim of human trafficking
【點擊查看本文中文版】
On Aug. 21, a set of two pictures was posted on LIHKG with a claim that they show a Taiwanese woman who was captured and taken to “KK Park”, a place in Myanmar that has recently become infamous for human trafficking.
The online forum post also implied she was killed and her corpse was found — with the first image showing a woman whose back is fully covered with tattoo and the second showing a similarly tattooed dead body lying on the ground.
The post has received over 600 engagements but the two pictures do not show what it claims. They have nothing to do with the recent cases of forced labor operations reported in East and Southeast Asia.
Through a reverse image search, Annie Lab found that the first picture is a news photo published in January 2020.
According to various news reports from such outlets as the Daily Mail and Thairath, the woman’s name was Warinthorn Chaiyachet, a 22-year-old Thai who was murdered by Apichai Ongwisit, an heir to a market in Bangkok, in August 2019.
Chaiyachet was reportedly involved in an affair with Apichai. She was detained and later killed in Apichai’s house. Thai police found her corpse in a plastic bag that was buried in Apichai’s backyard, the Bangkok Post reported. He was arrested in January 2020.
Local media said the police conducted an extensive search of Apichai’s house and found bones of other female victims inside metal caskets in his pond. Nicknamed “Ice Metal Casket” among Thai media, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2021.
Cases of employment scams allegedly carried out by crime syndicates in Southeast Asia have been making headlines in Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries.
Many victims were lured to Cambodia, Thailand or Myanmar with a promise of high-paying jobs, according to news reports, but instead, they were kept captive and forced to engage in illegal activities.
However, as far as Annie Lab can tell, there has been no report or official statement about a corpse of a Taiwanese woman associated with the human trafficking cases so far.
