Thai police apprehend human trafficking kingpin
BANGKOK/KUALA LUMPUR: Thailand arrested the suspected kingpin of a human trafficking network yesterday, the latest bust in a crackdown on people smuggling that has triggered a humanitarian crisis on the region’s seas.
The foreign ministers of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia will meet in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow to discuss how to tackle trafficking, after the clampdown led criminals to abandon boats crammed with thousands of migrants rather than risk landing on Thai shores.
Boatloads of Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have arrived in the waters of Indonesia and Malaysia, and many thousands more migrants remain adrift.
South-East Asian governments have shown little sign of a co-ordinated response to the crisis and have pushed some migrant boats back and forth across their maritime borders.
The Thai police said they suspected Patchuban Angchotipan, a former provincial government official in southern Satun province, was the boss of a large human trafficking network.
“In Satun province he is high-level,” said Thai national police chief General Somyot Poompanmuang. “He is the chief. He has many subordinates.”
Patchuban, whose nickname is “Kor Tong”, has been charged with a range of offences, including human trafficking and smuggling illegal migrant workers into Thailand.
He denies the charges against him.
Thailand ordered a clean-up of suspected trafficker camps earlier this month after 33 bodies, believed to be of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, were found in shallow graves near the Malaysian border.