Thailand police captured 132 people, including 116 Bangladeshis, suspected of being trafficked from Thailand from Saturday and Monday.
All of the 38 Bangladeshis captured on Saturday have alleged that they were unwilling travellers from Bangladesh, kidnapped one by one by gangs and forced onto a fishing boat by human traffickers.
If the claims are authenticated, then the exodus of the stateless Rohingya down Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast from Myanmar and Bangladesh is now being exploited by brutal mercenaries, interested only in the profit that can be made from selling people.
On Monday, Thai police found scores of sick and exhausted people hiding on a remote island and all but one of the 79 suspected human-trafficking victims were from Bangladesh, Reuters said.
Several of the rescued required immediate treatment; there were others who were believed to have been drowned.
The findings bring the number of people found since Saturday to more than 130 in the province of PhangNga, north of the famous resort island of Phuket, Thai officials told Reuters.
The first group was discovered in a rubber plantation in Takua Pa district on Saturday which comprised of 38 men from Bangladesh and 15 Rohingyas. Two Thai men were arrested on charges of human trafficking in these incidents, Thai police confirmed.
They were moved to a shelter in the neighbouring Ranong province while their cases were being investigated by Thai authorities ahead of possible repatriation.
Thailand’s Ministry of Social Development and Human Security is applying to a court in Takua Pa on Sunday to have the 53 boat people declared victims of human trafficking.
A declaration by the court would prevent local police from quickly deporting the group as illegal migrants and oblige officers to investigate the mass kidnapping gleaned during several hours of interviews last night.
All of the captured were questioned individually over their allegations. Large sums are usually extorted from the captives’ relatives before victims are taken across the border to Malaysia.
The claims and the theory are yet to be proven by independent authorities.
A reporter of the Thai tourism news portal Phuketwan who helped interview 25 of the 53 men, said the stories were consistent and nightmarish.
An electrician told the reporter that he had been snatched by a gang of men after being called to repair a house in Cox’s Bazar. He said: “I worry about my mother. I feed her medicine every day. Since I was kidnapped, she would have had nobody to give her medicine.”
A fisherman, enticed by a call to repair a net on a stranger’s boat, said he was grabbed and had his wrists tied. He said: “I was kidnapped. I do not have relatives in Malaysia. I was not planning on leaving Bangladesh in this way. My wife and children are there and will not know where I am.”
When the Dhaka Tribune contacted the Bangladesh consulate in Thailand, an official seeking anonymity said: “We have no information in this regard.”
However, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, the minister responsible for the welfare of Bangladeshis overseas, told the Reuters that the government was aware that people were being lured on to boats.