Malaysian police forensic teams began pulling out the remains of dozens of suspected human trafficking victims yesterday from shallow graves discovered at a jungle camp near the border with Thailand.
The government said it was investigating whether local forestry officials were involved with the people-smuggling gangs believed responsible for nearly 140 such graves discovered around grim camps in the country’s northwest.
The dense forests of southern Thailand and northern Malaysia have been a major stop-off point for smugglers bringing people to Southeast Asia by boat from Myanmar, most of them Rohingya Muslims who say they are fleeing persecution, and Bangladesh.
Malaysian authorities said on Monday they had found 140 graves, some containing more than one body, around 28 camps scattered along a 50km stretch of the border in the northern state of Perlis.
Authorities took a group of journalists to one of the camps yesterday, nestled in a gully in thick jungle up a steep, well-worn path about an hour’s walk from the nearest road.
Apparently abandoned in haste, what remained of the camp was little more than a tangle of bamboo and tarpaulin, but one police official, who did not want to be identified, said it could have held up to 400 people.
There was a faint smell of decomposition on the edges of the camp. It was painstaking work for the police, who poked gingerly at the damp earth with hoes. The first body was exhumed yesterday afternoon, a Reuters witness said.
Muhammad Bahar, of Perlis state police CID, said he could not confirm the state of the body or how long it had been there, but added the grave could contain more bodies.
The scale of the discoveries has raised questions about the level of complicity by officials in Malaysia and Thailand.
Malaysia’s Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi yesterday said initial investigations revealed links between forest rangers and smuggling syndicates, state news agency Bernama reported, adding that some had been detained by police.
Evidence of abuse and fear
The steep uphill path to the camp was littered with clothes and food wrappers that suggested it was a well-trodden route.
As reporters watched the police dig in sombre silence, evidence abounded that this had been a place of abuse and fear.
Several broken-down bamboo structures raised on stilts appeared to be makeshift prisons, with wire mesh walls and coils of barbed wire. There was a low cage, too small to stand up in, that police believe was used to punish migrants.
Amid the tangle of bamboo and tarpaulin was a large water tank. Police photographs of other camps in the area showed an abandoned generator, makeshift kitchens that could cook for hundreds of people, and evidence that crops were being grown – all signs that the camps had been there some time.
The grisly discoveries in Malaysia followed the uncovering of similar graves on the Thai side of the border earlier this month, which helped trigger a regional crisis.
The find led to a crackdown on the camps by Thai authorities, after which traffickers abandoned thousands of migrants in overloaded boats in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.