MASS GRAVES IN THAI JUNGLES Poverty lures them into death traps

A trans-national racket of human traffickers are luring an increasing number of fortune-seekers from Bangladesh into their trap and taking them to Thailand by boat for ultimate destinations in Malaysia and beyond dodging border guards.
Local agents of the international chain target poor villagers from different districts offering them good jobs abroad at ‘minimum costs’ and arrange the dangerous sea-crossing, according to officials.
About 87,000 people migrated to Malaysia by sea in July 2014, which was 61 per cent higher than that of the year before, according to a report of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Thai police on Monday arrested three local officials and a Myanmar national on suspicion of human trafficking a couple of days after the remains of 26 migrants were exhumed from a mass grave near a suspected human trafficking camp in Songkhla province, according to international news agencies.
At least 32 ‘mass graves’ of illegal migrants, most of them reportedly from Bangladesh and Myanmar, were discovered on Friday in remote and rugged mountainous areas in Thailand’s Songkhla province bordering Malaysia. The lone survivor rescued alive during the drive is reportedly a Bangladeshi.
‘The Coast Guard and the Border Guard Bangladesh have already intensified the vigilance along the borders. And so such incidents of human trafficking by boat from Cox’s Bazar have decreased significantly,’ state minister for home Asaduzzaman Khan told New Age on Monday.
He, however, said that some people being promised overseas jobs still try to cross the sea illegally and fall into the trap.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, particularly from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim community, make dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand, a trafficking route often on the way to south of Malaysia and beyond.
Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, a non-government organisation in Bangladesh, found that more than 540 Bangladeshis had died at sea in 2014.
In October 17, 2014 around 171 migrants were rescued from the jungles of Thailand and 118 of them were Bangladeshis. In the same year, about 700 Bangladeshi migrants were rescued from Thai coastal belt and forests close to sea, according to RMMRU.
A recent report by RMMRU revealed that more than 4000 people migrated to Malaysia through maritime routes, from only seven upazilas of Sirajganj district. Around 500 people were found missing and 250 were
reportedly detained in different jails of Thailand till December 28, last year.
RMMRU observed that a nexus of brokers and criminals from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand and some employers in Malaysia were involved in luring people particularly from the poverty-hit districts into ‘risky migration’ across the Bay of Bengal.
RMMRU chairperson Tasneem Siddiqui told New Age that the authorities had hardly taken any steps to stop migration through sea routes.
Mostly poor people become victims of ‘irregular’ migration as the transnational ring targets persons who cannot afford regular migration by air, she said.
The Bangladesh mission in Bangkok has not yet been able to get consular access to the lone survivor of a clandestine camp for illegal migrants reportedly from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The victim, who was left to die near the camp, told the local media that he came from Narshingdi and was kidnapped from the costal district of Cox’s Bazar.
‘Our mission in Bangkok will have to wait two more days to get consular access to the victim due to public holidays in Thailand,’ director general of the South-East Asian wing of the foreign ministry, Ashud Ahmed, told New Age on Monday.
He said the Bangladesh mission had already contacted the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry social development and human security of Thailand for permission also to visit the camp site.
The discovery of the site, just a few hundred metres from the border with Malaysia, once again exposed the kingdom’s central role in the regional human trafficking trade, AFP reported.
The lone survivor, Anuzar, was held captive in the death camp for nine months.
Anuzar, 28, who was left to die in a mass grave of around 30 victims, was rescued on Friday by the Thai authorities. He was being treated at a local hospital under police guard as he might give clues to the racket of human traffickers active in Thailand, according to international media reports.
Many Bangladeshis are shipped along with Rohingyas by traffickers promising good jobs in Malaysia. Some of them said they were simply abducted for ransoms.