Thai general among officials jailed for human trafficking
BANGKOK: A Thai general, police officers and local politicians were among dozens jailed for human trafficking on Wednesday, many handed decades-long sentences, at a mass trial exposing official complicity in the grim trade in Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants.
The junta launched a crackdown in May 2015 on a network of corrupt officials and gangmasters who made millions funnelling desperate migrants through southern Thailand and onto Malaysia, holding some for ransom in jungle camps.
It unspooled a crisis across Southeast Asia as traffickers abandoned their human cargo in the camps where hundreds died from starvation and malaria, and at sea in overcrowded boats which were then “ping ponged” between Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian waters.
The most senior government figure among the 62 people convicted on Wednesday was Lieutenant-General Manas Kongpan, who received 27 years for multiple human trafficking charges and other offences.
A judge at Bangkok Criminal Court said he was also guilty of complicity in a “transnational organised crime” network and “worked with others to facilitate human trafficking”.
Others received even more severe punishments. One Myanmar national who helped run the jungle camps got 94 years in jail, at least 17 others got terms more than seven decades long. Under Thai law, however, the maximum sentence a prisoner serves is 50 years.
Manas was a top figure in the security apparatus covering Thailand’s south. 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 Operations Command (ISOC) for the entire south. Current junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha was army chief at the time.