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Mass Graveyard With Rohinya Bodies Found Near Thai Malaysian Border


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BANGKOK: -- A mass graveyard near the Thai Malaysian border in Padang Besar district of Songkhka was found today by Thai authorities.

 

The graveyard buried the decomposed bodies of 33 people, believed to be Rohinya migrants.

 

The finding came after Thai border authorities were alerted by a Malaysian national that a large graveyard was found near the Padang Besar border.

 

Police and district officials went to inspect the area and found 33 tombs where the bodies were buried.

 

Another decomposed body was also lied at the area and was not yet buried.

 

Investigations later revealed that earlier the area was used by some 200-300 Rohinya migrants who smuggled into the country, and lived there.

 

Villagers said these migrants died of sickness and some died in fighting after having quarrels among themselves.

 

However as the authorities arrived at the area today, the area was left vacant and all Rohingya migrants had escaped, believed to cross into Malaysian border.

 

Royal Thai Police commissioner Pool Gen Somyot Phumphanmuang confirmed the graveyard finding but said it was used as a detention centre by human traffickers.

Source: http://englishnews.t...alaysian-border via Thai Visa

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Mass grave of 'boat people' found in southern Thailand

AFP

 

BANGKOK: -- Around 30 graves believed to belong to migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh were discovered Friday in southern Thailand, officials said, in an area criss-crossed with trafficking routes.

 

The grave site was found in Sadao district of Songkhla province at an abandoned camp for 'boatpeople' who had apparently been trafficked to Thailand's border area with Malaysia, a zone notorious for housing remote camps for trafficked migrants.

 

"There are 32 graves, four bodies have now been exhumed and are on their way... to hospital to for an autopsy," Sathit Thamsuwan a rescue worker, who was at the scene soon after the site was found, told AFP.

 

"The bodies were all decayed," he said, adding a single man from Bangladesh survived and is being treated at a hospital in nearby Padang Besar.

 

The local hospital confirmed the Bangladeshi man had survived and was in a stable condition.

 

The grisly discovery of the grave was also confirmed by a senior official from Sadao.

 

"There are more than 20 graves," he said, requesting anonymity.

 

"Military and border patrol police have now cordoned the area off so we can bring forensic officials to the site."

 

Tens of thousands of migrants from Myanmar -- mainly from the Rohingya Muslim minority -- and increasingly from Bangladesh make the dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand, a well worn trafficking route often on the way south to Malaysia and beyond.

 

Thousands of Rohingya -- described by the UN as one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- have fled deadly communal unrest in western Myanmar's Rakhine state since 2012.

 

Thailand has been criticised in the past for pushing boatloads of Rohingya entering Thai waters back out to sea and for holding migrants in overcrowded facilities.

 

The ruling junta says it has taken significant steps to combat trafficking since June, when the United States dumped Thailand to the bottom of its list of countries accused of failing to tackle modern-day slavery.

 

In January, Thai authorities confirmed more than a dozen government officials -- including senior policemen and a navy officer -- are being prosecuted for involvement or complicity in human trafficking.

 

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Been going on for a long time. Seems they bury them now and not just leave them in the shipping container.....

 

April 10, 2008 - 1:01PM

 

At least 54 Burmese immigrants suffocated to death in a cold storage container as they were being smuggled into Thailand to look for work, Thai police said today.

The incident is the deadliest in a wave of recent tragedies as people flee economic collapse in the military-ruled state.

A total of 121 people were crammed inside a container just six metres long and 2.2 metres wide, said Colonel Kraithong Chanthongbai, commander of the local police station in the border province of Ranong where the bodies were found late yesterday.

Twenty one people were hospitalised with dehydration and a lack of oxygen. They appeared to be recovering after receiving intravenous fluids, he said.

The airtight container was normally used to carry frozen seafood.

Kraithong said the immigrants were supposed to pay a Thai smuggling ring some 5,000 baht ($A170) each to transport them from the border to the nearby resort isle of Phuket.

Once there, they hoped to find work as day labourers, he added.

When the man driving the truck carrying the container realised some of the immigrants had died, he parked at the roadside, opened the door to the storage box and fled the scene, Kraithong said.

"The people said they tried to bang on the walls of the container to tell the driver they were dying, but he told them to shut up as police would hear them when they crossed through checkpoints inside Thailand," he said.

The bodies of the dead have been taken to a cemetery in Phuket, where they will be buried in temporary graves until they can be collected by relatives.

The 46 people who survived the ordeal without injury have been arrested, he said.

Colonel Narin Bussayawit, the deputy provincial police commander, said the container did have a ventilation system, but the device had broken.

"We don't know yet whether the ventilation system was out of order when they entered the container, or if it broke along the way. We are still investigating," he said.

About 540,000 migrant workers are registered to work in Thailand, most of them from Burma, according to the labour ministry.

But as many as one million undocumented workers are believed to be in the kingdom, where they often face exploitation by their employers, according to rights groups.

 

 

Thiry-two year old Ko Hla pulled his nineteen year old girlfriend closer, and managed a brave smile as they surveyed the small compartment of the refrigerated truck. He could feel the girl trembling at his side, her teeth chattering softly as if she had caught a chill, and he instinctively squeezed her tighter. He knew that she was not cold, only apprehensive, as she had been ever since leaving their native Burma to begin this long journey. Now, seeing the actual container of the truck, Ko was feeling anxious himself, although he was careful not to let his girlfriend know.

 

The truck compartment was tiny; much tinier than he had ever imagined it would be. Ko estimated that it couldn’t measure more than 20 feet in length, and maybe 6 feet in width. Glancing around at the group of people who stood with him, he wondered how they would ever fit. The truck looked like it would have trouble carrying fifty people comfortably, let alone this crowd. Although Ko didn’t know how many people were milling about with him, it certainly appeared to be a lot more than that, maybe even as many as 85 to 100.

 

The exact number of those about to embark on this passage with Ko Hla was 120, to be precise, and the young man was correct in his thinking. There was absolutely no way they would ever fit comfortably inside this small container.

 

Ko had not seen the driver of the truck, who would be responsible for transporting them to what they hoped would be good jobs and a better life, but a man and woman who had met them on the pier were there, walking amongst the waiting crowd, hastening them on.

 

‘Hurry, hurry’, they urged, ‘climb up, get in. Hurry.’

 

The throng began to move towards the container, and Ko and his girlfriend were pushed along, inching closer and closer to the vehicle, which sat with its engine running. They pulled themselves up into the compartment, and as the rest of the waiting people struggled to climb aboard the two were forced to move further towards the front.

 

It was pitch black inside the truck box, and as Ko and his girl sat down, people kept coming, squeezing the couple closer and closer together until they were packed like sardines inside the stifling hot compartment.

 

Soon space in the tiny trailer ran out, and people were forced to sit on top of each other. Ko noticed a woman and child sitting near him, the woman holding the little girl on her lap, trying to soothe her. But no matter how much she cooed to the girl and whispered to her, Ko could see that it wasn’t helping. The child appeared to be absolutely terrified.

 

After what seemed like an eternity the truck doors finally swung closed, and Ko could feel the vehicle begin to move. It shifted gears and slowly accelerated, rumbling along the invisible street outside.

 

The inside of the container was cloistered, terrifying in the inky black darkness, and sweltering hot. The sweat began to bead on Ko’s forehead, and then seep out along the flesh of his arms. Soon it was running down his body in rivulets, soaking through his clothing and saturating his hair. It beaded up on the ends of each strand, dripping down into his eyes and creating a burning sensation that he was unable to relieve. The back of the truck was so tightly jammed with people it was nearly impossible for him to raise his hand just to wipe his eyes.

 

The others crammed into that tiny space were feeling the same way as Ko. Many of them desperately tried to shift position, an endeavor that was not only futile, but one which angered those sitting nearby. Several were beginning to cry, as their inability to do anything about their miserable situation increased their frustration. But it was what Ko heard next that really frightened him.

 

People were beginning to moan and wheeze, apparently gasping for air and unable to catch their breath. Several were muttering that they couldn’t breathe. The little girl sitting on her mother’s lap was crying and begging for help.

 

A dim glow began to penetrate the darkness as people lit lighters in a vain attempt to see. In the shadowy light, Ko could barely discern the appalling conditions, and the other anxious faces peering around. But it obvious that they were all in serious trouble, and he wondered how long would it be before panic set in.

 

In a desperate effort to get help, the people began to bang on the walls of the container, screaming for the truck driver to stop. They yelled and they pounded, using energy they couldn’t afford to spare, but their calls went unheeded.

 

Although those inside the truck weren’t aware of it, one man in their group had been provided with a cell phone and the number of the driver earlier in the evening. He quickly attempted to call the man, but he was panicked himself, and in the dark he fumbled with the phone, nearly dropping it. Willing himself to calm down, the man finally completed his call and was relieved when the driver answered. Nearly shouting, he begged him to stop the truck, telling him that there was no air inside and they were unable to breathe.

 

But the vehicle did not stop. It continued on its way, much to the dismay of those inside, and the moaning and gasping continued. And then, suddenly, there was a loud hissing noise, and cool, frosty air began to flow into the trailer. The driver hadn’t stopped, but he had turned on the refrigeration unit, bringing immediate relief and joy to those trapped inside.

 

Ko said a mental prayer of thanks as he smiled down at his girlfriend. Then, unable to resist, he kissed the top of her head and nuzzled her sopping wet hair. The others inside began to laugh and to shout, delighted, happy, and blissfully unaware that the relief would be only temporary.

 

 

Ko Hla and his girlfriend, as well as the others riding in the back of the truck, were from the country of Burma, or Myanmar, a sovereign state in Southeast Asia. Their country had been under military control since 1962, and conditions there were harsh, as well as brutal. Well known for its inhumane treatment against its own people, the government of Burma subjected its citizens not only to horrendous living conditions, but also to genocide, child labor, slavery, repeated rapes of their women, and unbelievable poverty.

 

As a result of these gross human rights violations, and in an effort to escape them, thousands of Burmese people began to look elsewhere, hoping to find some place that would provide a better future for them. Between 1962, and 1988 a slow trickle of Burmese citizens migrated to other countries to start a new life.

 

But in 1988, when the Burmese Socialist Regime collapsed, it left its people out of work, destitute, and with no way to feed their families. In an effort to survive, millions more from the country of Myanmar were forced to flee, leaving all their worldly possessions to seek work elsewhere.

 

Although Burma is bordered by five different countries, Thailand, China, Laos, India, and Bangladesh, it was to Thailand that the majority of the Burmese people fled. The country was close by and reminiscent of home, and the border between Burma and Thailand was the Kra Buri River, making passage between the two countries easy. But more importantly, Thailand offered greater opportunities than Burma’s others neighbors.

 

Many of these Burmese migrants entered Thailand in the city of Ranong, a small fishing port that bordered the Kra Buri River. Ranong was a center for the fishing and seafood industries, and in the year 2008, it had a population of 300,000. Nearly half of the city’s residents were made up of Burmese migrants.

 

These migrants had come to Thailand hoping to find work and make a better life for themselves, and fortunately, for some, they would realize that dream. But for many others, the dream would quickly turn into a nightmare.

 

**********

 

The government of Thailand, like most countries, was not receptive to welcoming millions of illegal immigrants crossing their borders. But unlike many other countries, Thailand had a great need for these alien bodies, and they knew it. The southern part of the country, with its beautiful beaches and balmy climate, was quickly becoming a major tourist destination, and growth in the area was rapid. And, as with any advancement, help was desperately needed.

 

There were jobs open for everyone; construction workers to build high rise hotels, and maids to clean them. People to work in the fish industry and on agricultural farms, ensuring there was enough food available to feed those who came to vacation. And of course women, young, sultry and sexy females, to pleasure those lonely souls who traveled there.

 

There was so much work in fact that the country couldn’t provide enough manpower to fill the need. More and more often, the Thais would turn to migrants, both legal and illegal, to satisfy the demand. The migrants were hard working, discreet, and extremely cheap labor.

 

In December of 2004, when Thailand was hit by the great tsunami that resulted from the Indian Ocean earthquake, the southern part of the country was left in ruins. In the small resort areas around Ranong and Phuket, nearly 2600 people were killed, and the devastation was vast. Thailand desperately needed workers to re-build, and the Burmese migrants were eager to fill this need.

 

But without the Thai Government allowing them to legally enter the country, the people of Myanmar had no way to get in. Desperate to work and have money to feed their families, the majority of them were forced to turn to migrant brokers; men and women who offered to smuggle them into the country for a fee. To many of these desperate Burmese souls, finding a job broker seemed like a godsend. But in reality, it was not.

 

Whenever desperate circumstances arise, evil and greedy people are right there to seize the opportunity. They make their living preying on the vulnerabilities and desperate hopes of troubled and worried individuals, and the job brokers that many Burmese people turned to were no exception.

 

Migrant brokering is organized crime at its worst. A huge business, it generates millions of dollars in profit each year, and destroys just as many lives. It begins with the broker collecting a hefty fee, anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 baht, (the equivalent of $180 to $360 U.S. dollars), to smuggle the illegal immigrant out of the country and secure him a job.

 

Since it was obvious that the typical migrant could never come up with that kind of money before he left the country, it was common for an arrangement to be agreed upon whereby the migrant would pay off his debt to the broker in installments. It seemed like the perfect arrangement, except that once the migrants were inside Thailand and working, they were quick to discover that they had blindly dug themselves into a hole they could never get out of.

 

Like others who desperately want something, and will agree to just about anything to get it, the migrants too rarely thought about the consequences of what they were agreeing to. They didn’t consider the fact that they would be paid far less than the Thai natives, nor did they ever contemplate the price they were paying for their freedom. A broker’s fee could be as high as 12,000 baht per person. For a lone migrant, this could take years to pay off, but for a family, with two or four children, the debt could last a lifetime.

 

But it was not only the broker that the migrant owed fees to, the police and military demanded a share of his wages as well. If the migrant didn’t want to face criminal charges as an illegal alien, spend time in prison, be ordered to pay a fine, and then be deported back to his native country, he would have to pay.

 

Too late, many of those who came into the country illegally quickly realized that often their living conditions here were worse than they had been at home. After all the payouts, there was no money left to buy decent food, clothing or medical care.

 

The Burmese migrants also found that working conditions could be extremely harsh. For example, those who took jobs on a fishing vessel found that they were out to sea for thirty to forty days at a stretch, with only a three to five day respite in port. For this work, the migrant would be paid 3,000 to 6,000 baht per month, ($90 to $180 US dollars), while the Thai doing the same job on the same boat was paid double that. When he finally did get a few days off at home, he was too tired to spend it with his family, finding that he slept most of the time before returning to the ship.

 

Those migrants who went to work on farms found their working conditions pretty much the same as those on the fishing vessels. They worked long days, in sweltering heat, for very little money. The only exception was that they were allowed to be home each night.

 

Even worse than the fishing and farming industries were those who took jobs in factories. These migrants found themselves working in sweatshops, toiling from 12 to 14 hours each day for little more than $50 to $75 dollars a month.

 

There was another routine in their new country that greatly upset the immigrants; the practice of their new employers to confiscate their passports. Ordered to release them upon being hired, this action made it impossible for the migrants to quit their jobs, or leave the country, even if they wanted to.

 

After only a few weeks in their new home, many of those who had come seeking a brighter future found themselves saddled with debt, living in a foreign country, and missing the one thing that could get them home; their passports.

 

For Ko Hla and all the others riding in the small container of that miserable seafood truck, the chance that they were heading into this very same situation, although not thought about by them, was a distinct possibility.

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Fresh horror HAUNTS Thailand's TIP upgrade bid

 

May 5, 2015 1:00 am

 

PRAYUT'S PLEDGE TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS BEEN DIVERTED INTO A PUBLIC RELATIONS EXERCISE

 

The discovery of 26 corpses of what are believed to be Muslim Rohingya migrants threatens to sink Thailand's already dismal reputation on human trafficking even further. With the United States currently reviewing its annual report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP), the grisly find has left the Thai military regime struggling to convince the international community it is doing enough to combat the trafficking.

 

The mass grave - thought to contain the bodies of stateless people from the Myanmar-Bangladesh border - was found on a hilltop in the southern border province of Songkhla last week.

 

The bodies were discovered at a "holding area", where migrants were kept before being sneaked across the porous border into Malaysia. While the cause of the deaths is not yet clear, the police chief described the site as a "virtual prison camp", which appeared to have been abandoned just days before its discovery.

 

Its secrets would likely have been buried forever had one "prisoner" not escaped and told his story to police. But that story has raised even more questions over the country's handling of trafficking. The major question is how traffickers managed to build this holding camp (and perhaps others) in Songkhla. How did they hide so many people on a hilltop without their activities being noticed by the authorities? The hills in the border region between Songkhla's Sadao district and Malaysia’s Pedang Besar are notorious for their trafficking trails. Every Thai border official who works in this area knows about them.

 

The lone survivor said he had heard that more than 500 migrants had been killed in the holding areas along the border. The recently established trafficking investigation team says there is at least one more camp in the area where the mass grave was discovered. Police had apparently been tipped off to the presence of such camps long before last week's grisly discovery, yet they chose not to take any action or investigate further.

 

Difficulties managing political transition in the capital are no longer an excuse for the authorities' failure to act on this problem. Thailand has been under the international microscope over human trafficking for years now. The country was downgraded to the lowest tier in the annual US TIP report last year. This year's report is due in the next couple of months.

 

The military-backed government, whose rulers cited the threat of civil war and the need for reform as reasons for ousting an elected administration last May, claims it is working hard to end the trafficking.

 

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has threatened officials caught aiding traffickers with tough punishment. His government set up a committee to combat trafficking last year after the TIP downgrade. But rather than ordering concrete action, the committee has mostly been busy with diplomacy and preparing information updates for Washington in a bid to get Thailand's TIP status upgraded.

 

Foreign Ministry officials have been striving to convince the international community of Thailand's "good intentions" in the fight against trafficking. Meanwhile authorities and security officials tasked with actually tackling the problem mostly stand idle.

 

When they have acted, it has been to arrest the victims rather than traffickers. None of the major trafficking syndicates has been rooted out in the months since Prayut pledged serious action. Instead, Prayut's government and his armed forces have maintained a stance of intimidation towards news media that report on the issue.

 

To turn his words into action that yields results, the prime minister must determine whether the officials tasked with tackling trafficking are doing their job. Public relations must take a back seat until Thailand can actually show real gains in the battle against the trafficking of people.

 

http://www.nationmul...d-30259337.html

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Families forced to pay ransom for Bangladeshis stuck in jungle camps

 

THE DAILY STAR/|ASIA NEWS NETWORK

DHAKA May 5, 2015 1:00 am

30259333-01_big.jpg

 

PROMISING jobs in Malaysia, a gang of human traffickers held about 250,000 Bangladeshis captive in Thailand for ransom over the past eight years and made millions of taka (a million taka is about Bt428,000).

 

Lured by dreams of a better life, many of the country's poor boarded cargo vessels to arrive in Thailand first and then travel overland to Malaysia.

 

However, before they could make it to their final destination, their dreams turned into a collective nightmare. Held in crammed and filthy conditions in jungles for months, even years, they were often beaten up and starved for ransom.

 

Thailand is a strategic location for holding victims in remote mountains dotting the coast, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Malaysia said.

 

"The migrants are confined to Thailand until a ransom is paid before they are sent to Malaysia. In the past some of these job seekers fled without paying. It's better to settle the business at the right time," he said, on condition of anonymity.

 

This past Saturday Thai authorities retrieved 26 bodies from a mass grave in an abandoned jungle camp in Sadao district in Songkhla province, where trafficking victims from Myanmar and Malaysia were believed to have been buried.

 

In October last year, Thai police rescued 134 trafficked victims confined in a remote rubber plantation in the south of Thailand. The BBC reported that all the victims were Bangladeshi, though Bangladeshi authorities said 118 were Bangladesh nationals while the rest were Rohingyafrom Myanmar.

 

Earlier in September, a group of 37 people, also reportedly Bangladeshi, was rescued from the jungle.

 

Horrific tales

 

All this just sheds a light on how modern-day slave trade has taken firm root in Bangladesh and across the region. Beaten, abused and left with no food, these men tell a horrific tale of how they were abducted and forced to work in a plantation in hazardous conditions.

 

According to the Malaysian broker, traffickers' agents spread across Bangladesh get between 5,000 taka and 10,000 taka (Bt2,150 and Bt4,300) for each person supplied to the chain, and the godfathers between 15,000 and 30,000 taka.

 

The job seekers are not released from the Thai jungles until their captors get confirmation from the traffickers in Bangladesh that they have received ransom from the victims' families. The amount varies, but it is usually between 200,000 and 350,000 taka per person.

 

Much of the ransom is paid via mobile banking, and the traffickers and their brokers have underhand dealings with local agents of various mobile banking services.

 

Under pressure from the traffickers to pay the ransom by the deadline, helpless families sell their last piece of land, often their homesteads, or take loans from loan sharks at high interest rates.

 

Information on the trade and its size is hard to come by due to its clandestine nature. But victims and NGOs working on the issue say the network is spread over Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia.

 

According to a UN report released in December, some 53,000 people from Bangladesh and Myanmar voyaged to Malaysia and Thailand by sea last year alone.

 

Estimates by local and international NGOs are based on secondary sources, mainly media reports, and do not reflect the true magnitude of the problem.

 

In November last year, Daily Star interviewed eight trafficked victims at home and in Malaysia, plus six union chairmen from Cox's Bazar's coastal area and several rights activists to get an idea of the trade. The figures they provide are staggering:

 

At least two cargo vessels, each carrying about 500 people, leave Bangladesh from every week for eight months a year. Usually, the business is down in June-September because of rain and turbulent sea.

 

This means some 4,000 people are trafficked every month or about 32,000 a year. And if the 200,000 taka ransom were realised from each of them, the amount would stand at 6.4 billion taka.

 

But not all families can pay ransom. The victims interviewed said some fail to arrange the money, and many were sold as slaves.

 

The fact that people are sold as slaves in Thailand even to this day comes as no surprise. In 2013, the Guardian reported how the Thai seafood industry, worth over US$7 billion annually, is built on slave labour, as "ghost ships" reach the Thai shore along the Andaman Sea from the northeast direction - Bangladesh and Myanmar.

 

The newspaper found that a slave can be bought for around $250 in Thailand, while Reuters news agency put the price at between $155 and $1,550.

 

"I believe the actual number of people migrating through the route will exceed the estimate," said Teknaf's Katabuniya UP chairman Hamidur Rahman.

 

From 2011 to 2013, between 50,000 and 100,000 job seekers made the voyage through the Reju canal estuary point alone, said Abul Kashem, executive director of Help, an Ukhia-based NGO.

 

The Daily Star's estimate of 250,000 Bangladeshis being trafficked over the last eight years is based on information given by victims and rights activists, and is therefore just a conservative estimate. And the calculation was done for the past eight years because we could only trace victims back that far.

 

Of the estimated victims, 10 to 15 per cent are Rohingya, according to Teknaf and Ukhia police.

 

Those who have been rescued cannot give any names, but say the trade is controlled by several organised rings.

 

Jewel Barua, 22, was one of those rescued by the Thai police from a jungle in January last year. He had been abducted and shipped to the country in November 2013.

 

'Women-only group ran the show'

 

In the jungle he was held, he saw a women-only group running the business. The leader of the group was called "Kaka Rani and looked like a Thai national".

 

Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights, Thailand, said there were tens of thousands of people in this predicament, beaten and tortured for ransom, whether at sea, in jungle camps, or in other holding areas in Malaysia.

 

"In some cases, Thai authorities have been complicit in human |trafficking, selling detainees to |criminal syndicates, who then |bring them to traffickers' camps," he told this paper in an email late last year.

 

In January this year, Thai authorities confirmed more than a dozen state officials, including senior policemen and a navy officer, were being tried for involvement or complicity in human trafficking.

 

On the Bangladesh side, Teknaf and St Martin's Island are at |the heart of the trade. After arriving from different districts of the |country, fortune seekers are kept |in houses along the Teknaf coast |and robbed of all their belongings, even their sandals. On fixed dates, they are walked to boats by brokers' assistants, who are usually local people.

 

Captains of most of these vessels are Thai nationals. Once taken to the Thai coast, the victims are separated into groups named after the godfathers in Teknaf and Cox's Bazar who send them.

 

In clearings cut out in parts of the dense Thai jungles, traffickers set up numerous tarpaulin tents for the job seekers, who are shifted from one place to another for security reasons and to facilitate transfer into Malaysia.

 

The shifting requires hours of journey in pickup-style roofless vehicles. On its open back are placed 20 migrants, who are then wrapped in a porous plastic sheet.

 

On the way, whenever asked, presumably by police, what was being carried under the sheet, Jewel Barua heard his captors say: "Vegetables."

 

In addition to those held captive in jungles, there are reserve supplies of migrants in the bushes atop Thai hills and islands along the coast and also in cruising ships moored in the Andaman Sea, according to victims and brokers.

 

The reserve is for backup, in case a supply of migrants is caught by police.

 

 

http://www.nationmul...u-30259333.html

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My thoughts on this horrific practise, are that it's a trans-government phenomenon, that previous governments are at the very least, complicit.

 

The current government may or may not clean this up, but is likely to plaster over the cracks and ask the world to 'move on, nothing to see here.'

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