Malaysian police forensic teams, digging with hoes and shovels, on Tuesday began pulling out bodies from shallow graves found in abandoned jungle camps. An inter-governmental body said hundreds of victims of human traffickers may be buried.
The Malaysian government said it was investigating whether local forestry officials were involved with the people-smuggling gangs believed to be responsible for nearly 140 such graves discovered along the Thailand border.
The dense forests of southern Thailand and northern Malaysia have been a major stop-off point for smugglers bringing people to Southeast Asia by boat from Myanmar and Bangladesh. A majority of them are Rohingya Muslims who say they are fleeing persecution.
Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told a news briefing in Geneva that the body’s representative in the region “predicts hundreds more (bodies) will be found in the days to come”.
Thai Crackdown
The grisly discoveries in Malaysia followed the uncovering of similar graves on the Thai side of the border at the beginning of May. The find led to a crackdown on the camps by Thai authorities, after which traffickers abandoned thousands of migrants in overloaded boats in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.
If an individual’s family did not pay, those staying long in the camps were tortured, beaten and deprived of food.
– Joe Millman, Spokesperson for IOM
“They are often starving, not eaten for weeks,” said Abdul Rahman Mahmud, who runs a small hostel. “They eat seeds or leaves or whatever they can find. It’s a real pity and it’s sad to see this.”
(With inputs from Reuters)
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