Villagers in southern Thailand have hinted at another traffickers’ jungle camp holding more bodies than the 26 exhumed from the first one.
The digging site, in Sadao district in Songkhla province, yielded five bodies on Friday and 21 more on Saturday. All are believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Authorities found three survivors at the camp, two of them children.
”There could be more than 50 graves in the second camp, and there are other camps with smaller numbers of buried bodies scattered near the border,” Phuketwan quoted a reliable source.
It reported that many more are buried on other hillsides on the same mountain.
The discovery of the large camp, hidden deep in the jungle, came this week with the arrest of a trafficker named Anwar, who is thought to be one of southern Thailand’s most significant traffickers.
Police Major General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot said: ”The brokers’ networks throughout the villages have always acted to warn them of raids in the past. But we believe the cycle is reversing now and more people are beginning to understand that trading in people is morally wrong, and abhorrent.”
The abandoned camp, hidden high on a hill, was strewn with shoes and clothing. It had operated for about a year, police said.
Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation with UN involvement to find out what took place at the site.
“The discovery of these mass graves should shock the Thai government into shutting down the trafficking networks that enrich officials but prey on extremely vulnerable people,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
