Malaysia removes bodies on eve of migrant crisis talks

Malaysian police Thursday removed the remains of nine people from jungle camps near the Thai border where an estimated 139 bodies are believed to have been buried in a still unfolding human trafficking crisis in Southeast Asia.

The skeletal remains were carried in white cloth bags tied to wooden poles to the border town Wang Kelian on the eve of an international meeting in Thailand on the desperate situation of refugees and migrants fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, a newspaper reported Thursday that the Dalai Lama urged Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon, to speak out to protect her country’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims amid the trafficking crisis.

The abandoned sites in Malaysian territory were discovered on the weekend after the massive scale of human smuggling was exposed by a Thai crackdown on trafficking networks, which has left thousands of desperate people stranded at sea on rickety boats.

“Based on the size of the graves, and after the area was cleared... we have a clearer indication — single grave, single per- son,” Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said in Wang Kelian.

Malaysia previously said it had discovered 139 grave sites.

Thailand is hosting a regional meeting on Friday to address the crisis, which has seen more than 3,500 people arrive on Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian soil.

I MET HER TWO TIMES. I MENTIONED ABOUT THIS PROBLEM AND SHE TOLD ME SHE FOUND SOME DIFFICULTIES, THAT THINGS WERE NOT SIMPLE. BUT I FEEL SHE CAN DO SOMETHING. DALAI LAMA, as quoted by The Australian newspaper