220 ‘Turkish" human trafficking victims found in Thai camp

BANGKOK: Thai police have discovered at a secret camp in the kingdom’s deep south more than 220 suspected Turkish migrants believed to be victims of a trafficking ring.
Police Col. Chusak Panas-umporn said Thursday that immigration police found the group at a secluded camp near rubber plantations in southern Songkhla province.
The group included 78 men, 60 women and 82 children.
Chusak said they identified themselves as Turkish but did not carry any identification documents. Police were seeking a Turkish translator to try to communicate with the group members before pressing charges of illegal entry against them.
Police suspected the traffickers were planning to move the group to a third country.
Thailand has long been a hub for people trafficking, with thousands of Rohingya boat people from neighboring Myanmar believed to have passed through the kingdom in recent years.
“It’s an unprecedented case that there are so many Turkish people arrested here,” Police Major General Thatchai Pitaneelaboot said by telephone.
“They came as families and looks like they wanted to go somewhere else because they kept their belongings ready to move,” he said, adding that several suspected minders had fled during the raid.
It was unclear how they arrived in Thailand. Police were waiting for an interpreter to help question the detainees, who have not yet been charged with any crime.
The Turkish embassy said it had no information about their case while the UN refugee agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In January Thailand detained more than 500 Rohingya refugees after a raid on a suspected people-trafficking camp in its deep south, a Muslim-dominated region plagued by a nearly decade-long insurgency.
Thousands of Rohingya, described by the United Nations as among the world’s most persecuted minorities, have fled sectarian violence in western Myanmar in rickety boats since 2012, mostly believed to be heading for Malaysia.
Thailand said last year it was investigating allegations that some army officials in the kingdom were involved in the trafficking of Rohingya.