Thailand cracks down on human trafficking
Network of jungle camps discovered
BANGKOK — Thailand’s police chief announced the arrest of a powerful provincial mayor on Friday and said 50 police officers are being investigated in a widening human trafficking scandal spanning four Asian countries.
At meeting of senior police, police chief Gen. Somyot Poompanmoung delivered the strongest public admission yet of police involvement in trafficking syndicates that use Thailand as a regional transit hub. Human rights groups have long accused Thai authorities of collusion in the trafficking industry but claims were routinely denied.
“If you are still neglecting, or involved with, or supporting or benefiting from human-trafficking networks — your heads will roll,” Somyot told the meeting at Bangkok’s national police headquarters.
Last Friday, police unearthed two dozen bodies from shallow graves in the mountains of southern Thailand, a grim discovery that has since exposed a network of jungle camps run by traffickers who allegedly held migrants captive while they extorted ransoms from their families. A total of 33 bodies, believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, have now been exhumed.
The discoveries have embarrassed Thailand, which is already under pressure from the United States and the European Union to crack down on human trafficking.
Authorities say they have known for years the area on the Thai-Malaysia border was used to smuggle Rohingya Muslims, a persecuted minority in neighbouring Myanmar, as well as Bangladeshis and other migrants, to third countries including Malaysia, which is predominantly Muslim.
Fearing the recent crackdown, trafficking gangs appear to be abandoning migrants in southern Thailand. Since Thursday, police patrolling the Khao Kaew mountain in Padang Besar found 96 migrants, all frail and hungry, who claimed to be Rohingyas and Bangladeshis, said police Col Palahon Gadekaew.
They all said they were brought to Thai shores by boat and abandoned by a middleman while being told they were heading to Malaysia. Palahon said the migrants would be fed and sheltered before being turned over to authorities.
The head of Thailand’s military-controlled government, Prime Minister Prayuth Chanocha, called Friday for a meeting with Malaysia and Myanmar, saying Thailand cannot solve the problem alone. “We have to punish the human traffickers strictly, according to the law,” Prayuth said. “If any government officials or authorities are involved, they will face punishment.”
In a country known for pervasive corruption, many in Thailand have reacted with horror but not surprise to the apparent failure of authorities to stop the trafficking.
A swift crackdown has included the arrests of eight people — mostly local officials and police — for suspected involvement. Among them was the prominent local mayor of Padang Besar, the sub-district of southern Songkla province where most of the bodies were exhumed.
Somyot called Mayor Banjong Pongphon a “key suspect” in the investigation.