Anuzar, a Bangladeshi survivor of a camp for human trafficking victims in the jungle of southern Thailand, had been kidnapped from Cox’s Bazar and held captive for nine months.
The 28-year-old, in his hospital bed in the southern town of Pedang Besar, on Friday said he had no money to pay the ransom.
”I want my mother and brother to know I am alive,” he said. ”I was never able to contact them and ask them to pay my ransom.”
Thai authorities on Friday raided the large camp, hidden in a dense jungle in Songkhla province, and rescued Anuzar (as spelt by Phuket Wan). He had been left there for dead. He is now in a local hospital and stable.
Nearby were two bodies, abandoned above ground, and what appeared to be about 30 more bodies hidden in shallow graves. The camp is said to be located just 300 metres from Thailand’s border with Malaysia.
Anuzar, looking hungry and with wasted muscles, at Pedang Besar Hospital said the dead had mostly been held in the camp for longer than his nine-month period of captivity.
”We were the people who could not pay the ransom; so they kept us and did not really care whether we lived or died,” he said.
A police guard has been placed near Anuzar’s bedside. As a survivor, he may one day play a key role in testifying against the traffickers.
Authorities in Friday’s raid involving 200 police, soldiers and paramedics found 39 shanty shacks with one roughly built tower that could have enabled a guard to overlook the camp’s perimeter.
Police believe the traffickers abandoned the camp two days ago, possibly fleeing with able-bodied women and men who had more value than Anuzar.
At times, up to 1,000 people could be held in the camp, he said.
”Eight brokers controlled the camp,” Anuzar said. ”I knew three well — Ahmed Ali, Anwar and Sorim-Ida. Some are Rohingya, some are Malaysian.”
He said he believed 10 Bangladeshis were among the dead scattered near the camp, along with at least 30 Rohingya.
”I know three Bangladeshis — Usaman, Belawa and Sahid — are among the dead,” said Anuzar, who hails from Narsingdi, but says he was abducted in Cox’s Bazar.
More Bangladeshis have joined Rohingya in the boats because some are enticed to seek better jobs in Malaysia. Others say they are abduction victims who had no intention of leaving their homeland.
The human trafficking industry from Burma and Bangladesh has grown and is now so lucrative that purpose-adapted trawlers are carrying cargoes of hundreds of people, not fish.
”Most of us have been beaten or abused,” Anuzar said. ”In the camp, we were never able to get enough food or water. Showering seldom happened.”
The camp was ”like a village”, he said. He hopes to get in touch as soon as possible with his mother Manucha.
Meanwhile, the AFP reported that there is a second person rescued alive.
Doctors say that the second man is around 35-years-old. Anuzar and the older man were suffering from a range of ailments.
“Both are malnourished, have scabies and lice,” doctor Kwanwilai Chotpitchayanku told AFP at Padang Besar hospital.
“The older man could not walk, he had to be carried off the mountain. He had not eaten anything for two days before he was found. He told the translator he had a fever in the jungle for two months.”
Doctors said the man had not been fully identified but was from either Bangladesh or Myanmar.
Both men were rigged to IV drips and were frail despite their young ages, according to an AFP reporter.
Source: The Daily Star
