More bodies exhumed at graves in Thai ‘trafficking camp’

PEDANG BESAR: Dozens of police and volunteers exhumed six more bodies on Saturday in the second day of digging out a mass grave near a suspected human trafficking camp on a hillside deep in a southern Thai jungle.
The digging site, in Sadao district in Songkhla province, on Friday yielded four bodies believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh. About 30 people are thought to be buried at the site.
Authorities found a lone survivor at the camp on Friday and two others, both children, on Saturday. The children were taken to a nearby hospital.
Police Gen. Aek Angsananont, deputy commissioner-general of the Royal Thai Police, told reporters authorities had known about the camp’s existence for a while.
“We heard news about this camp and tried to find it many times but because it was deep jungle, it was very difficult,” he said. He said police believed the deaths were due to “a disagreement within the human trafficking trade.”
Illegal migrants, many of them Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar and Bangladesh, brave often perilous journeys by sea to escape religious and ethnic persecution and to seek jobs in Malaysia and Thailand, a regional trafficking hub.
At least one more human trafficking camp is thought to be located not far from the graves, said Police Col. Anuchon Chamat, deputy commander of Nakorn Si Thammarat Provincial Police and a member of the investigation team.
Identifying victims could take time as relatives would need to travel from Myanmar and Bangladesh to offer DNA samples for testing and to identify belongings, where possible, said Police General Jarumporn Suramanee.
“There might be a problem that their relatives might not come straightaway,” said the general, who supervised the excavations on Saturday.
The abandoned camp, hidden high on a hill, was strewn with shoes and clothing. It had operated for about a year, police said. “From the evidence given by witnesses who were in the camp, we believe there was violence here and people died from the violence,” said Jarumporn, without giving further details.
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.