> Several of the buildings hit by the Thai military over the past week had previously been identified by the U.S. government and human-rights groups for allegedly holding scores of trafficked workers forced to scam Americans and other foreigners.

Yes, these are trafficked (kidnapped) people. Most likely the ratio of kidnap victims to “bosses” is high, as they wouldn’t enslave people if they could just pay enough people to do this. So there probably aren’t many people in that building you wouldn’t feel bad for.

I’d go further though: Execution is not an appropriate punishment for scamming people, period. Any time we voice disinterest in whether “bad people” are killed by the government, we make it easier for governments to get away with extrajudicial executions (or as it’s called when ordinary citizens do it, murder).