Convictions in major Thai human trafficking trial
were then “ping ponged” between Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian waters.
After a day delivering verdicts for many of the 102 defendants, Bangkok Criminal Court found Lieutenant-General Manas Kongpan guilty of multiple human trafficking charges.
A judge said he was also guilty of complicity in a “transnational organised crime” network and “worked with others to facilitate human trafficking”.
The ruling is an extremely rare conviction for a senior army officer in juntaruled Thailand.
Manas, the highest-ranking official on trial, was a top figure in the security apparatus covering Thailand’s south – a key transit zone in a trafficking trail that stretched from Myanmar to Malaysia.
The court heard he received bank transfers from trafficking agents worth 14.8 million baht ($440,000).
But the police investigation found he also used his position to guide trafficking gangs around checkpoints after their arrival on remote beaches as they headed to the jungle camps.
In 2013 he was promoted to head the Internal Security Command (ISOC) for the entire south. Current junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha was army chief at the time.
Before the crackdown rights groups had long accused officials of ignoring – and even conducting – the trade in humans through Thailand’s southern provinces.
The trial has revealed a lattice of military, police, local political and mafia figures acting as traffickers, agents and logistics men, all soaking up cash from some of Asia’s poorest and most vulnerable migrants.
Over the years the smuggling gangs are estimated to have netted tens of millions of dollars.
Soldiers and kingpins
Some reporting restrictions were placed by judges citing national security and Manas was allowed to give evidence behind closed doors.
Another well-connected kingpin convicted yesterday is Pajjuban Aungkachotephan, better known as Ko Tong or “Big Brother Tong”.
Police accused him of using private Andaman Sea islands, close to tourist spots such as Koh Lipe, to shift boatloads of migrants to the mainland, where they were packed into lorries and taken to the fetid camps straddling the Malaysia border.
He was found guilty of human trafficking and links to organised crime.
By evening over 50 people, including two police officers, had been convicted of various offences, ranging from guard- ing the squalid migrant camps to trafficking and negligence. At least 10 were acquitted including an army captain and a ranking police officer.
Thailand’s role as a key trafficking route spilled into full view after officials found dozens of shallow graves in the hidden camps dotting the steep, forested hills of the Thai-Malaysian border in May 2015.
They revealed the horrors endured by some of the migrants, who were starved and held in bamboo pens by traffickers who demanded over $1,000 for their release.
‘Big business, big money’
The verdict is being closely watched inside and outside Thailand.
The government is desperate to dispel the kingdom’s notorious reputation for human trafficking.
Critics say the case was prematurely concluded and describe a trial marred by witness intimidation, secret evidence hearings and restrictions on media reporting.
“We expect there are many more perpetrators out there,” Amy Smith, from Fortify Rights, said. “This is a big business with big money.”
The senior policeman who initially headed the investigation, Major General Paween Pongsirin, fled Thailand under threats to his life. Days before he left he said the case had been pulled before it could delve further into the complicity of officials.
Rohingya in limbo
Stateless Rohingya Muslims have fled neighbouring Myanmar by the tens of thousands since sectarian violence flared in 2012.
Five years have passed since Hla Hla Sein was forced into a displacement camp in western Myanmar for Rohingya Muslims, where disease and deprivation are rife and armed guards patrol a barbed-wire perimeter.
But after a crackdown on the international smuggling routes that once offered a dangerous – but viable – escape route, she now sees no way out.
“We have no idea how many years we will have to live like this,” the 40-yearold widow said inside the tiny bamboo hut she shares with her son, tugging nervously at her purple headscarf.
“Our lives are worse than animals . . . we are human only in name.”
Deadly sectarian riots in 2012 drove more than 120,000 Rohingya into the camps in Rakhine state, where they live in ramshackle homes and are deprived of adequate food, schools and doctors.
For years human traffickers cashed in on the group’s desperation, ferrying thousands of Rohingya across the Andaman Sea to countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The journeys were defined by danger: from rickety boats on high seas to abuse and even death at the hands of the gangs, who held many victims for ransom in jungle camps on the Thai-Malaysia border.
That route was shuttered by Thailand’s junta in 2015 and few boats have left the camps since, according to residents, aid workers and migration experts.
The move may have spared Hla Hla Sein death at sea or abuse at the hands of smugglers, but it also cut off a way out of a painful limbo.
Hla Hla Sein and her son had tried to escape to Malaysia before the crackdown, but their boat was so overcrowded it started to sink a few hours into the journey, forcing the captain to turn back. It was only after they returned to shore that she found out the smugglers had planned to sell them as slaves at their destination.
“I was ready to die at sea as we have nothing in this country,” she said. “Our children cannot get education, even I cannot work. I thought dying would be better.”
Over the past five years almost 170,000 have fled the country, according to the UN’s refugee agency, leaving many families split across borders.
“It’s impossible to go to Malaysia by boat nowadays,” said a Rohingya camp leader, asking not to be named. “We do not want people to die at sea.”
For those left behind in Myanmar’s camps, escape is no longer an option.
“We are suffering,” said Hla Hla Sein. “We are not supposed to stay like this forever.”