AFP
WANG KELIAN, MAY 25
A Malaysian policeman mans an armoured vehicle at a security checkpoint in Wang Kelian near the Malaysia-Thailand border, on May 25, 2015. Malaysian police said Monday they had found 139 grave sites and 28 abandoned detention camps used by people-smugglers and capable of housing hundreds, laying bare the grim extent of the region's migrant crisis.
National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said it remained unclear how many bodies were buried in the inaccessible area of mountainous jungle along the Thai border.
But the findings appeared to indicate a system of camps and graves larger than those discovered by Thai police in early May, a finding which ignited regional concern about human-smuggling and -trafficking.
The Malaysian discovery follows earlier denials by the government -- long accused by rights groups of not doing enough to stop the illicit trade -- that such grisly sites existed in the country.
"(Authorities) found 139 suspected graves. They are not sure how many bodies are inside each grave," Khalid told reporters in the border town of Wang Kelian.
"They also found 28 detention camps."
It's a very sad scene... to us even one is serious and we have found 139," Khalid said.
The police chief also vowed to find the culprits involved in the crime.
Bodies were being exhumed and police have released no information yet on causes of death.
Khalid said the largest of the 28 camps could hold up to 300 people, another had a capacity of 100, and the rest about 20 each.
By comparison, Thai police have said they found a half-dozen jungle camps and more than 30 bodies so far on their side.
Thailand was previously a major people-smuggling route to Malaysia, which is the preferred destination of migrants from Bangladesh and from Myanmar's oppressed Rohingya minority.
But a Thai crackdown launched after graves were found there triggered a regional boat people crisis as nervous traffickers abandoned overloaded vessels carrying the starving migrants.
After initially turning boatloads away, Malaysia and Indonesia last week bowed to international pressure to accept the boat people temporarily. Rights groups say thousands more men, women and children may still be at sea.
- 'Zero tolerance' -
Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday he was "deeply concerned" by the graves, vowing to "find those responsible". Earlier this month he declared Malaysia had zero tolerance for human trafficking.
But the graves will likely focus new attention on Malaysia's record in battling a bustling trade that activists say is run by criminal syndicates with the suspected involvement of corrupt officials.
The US State Department's annual human-trafficking report lists Malaysia on the lowest-possible Tier 3, for countries which are failing to stop the trade.
"Either there has been a lack of enforcement by (Malaysian) authorities or they had closed an eye and colluded with criminal syndicates to traffick the migrants," Aegile Fernandez, of Malaysian migrant-rights group Tenaganita, said of the graves discovery.
"In today's modern slavery, traffickers cannot work alone." Relatively prosperous Malaysia is a magnet for migrants from poorer regional neighbours.
Activists say authorities close an eye to illegal migration in part to help satisfy the need for low-paid labour in Malaysian industry and agriculture.
But the State Department report says Rohingya and other migrants are often subject to abusive or exploitative work and depredations by police and other officials -- trapped in virtual slavery via debt bondage or forced into prostitution.
Khalid said Malaysian police found the jungle sites after reacting to the Thai graves discovery.
But several Malaysian villagers told AFP on Monday that bedraggled Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants had been a common sight in the area weeks before the current crisis erupted.
Some bore ugly scars or had bloodied feet, apparently from trekking across the border, and would ask locals for food and water.
"Since last month I have seen many of these migrants coming in. Every day there were around 12 to 15, sometimes even babies," said Lyza Ibrahim, a local shopkeeper.
Another villager, Abdul Rahman Mahamud, said typically the migrants would eventually be picked up in private cars by unknown people and driven away. "We are not scared of them because they are too weak to even walk properly," he said.
Khalid declined to answer when asked how the extensive string of camps had been built without authorities knowing.
But Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the graves discovery proved Malaysia "was not hiding anything".
"Malaysia is committed and serious about resolving the issue of human trafficking," he told AFP.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called for strict punishment to migrants, who illegally leave Bangladesh and set out towards Southeast Asia by sea, and the human-traffickers who assist them, media reported on Monday.
“They are tainting the image of our country on the international stage, and putting their own lives in danger,” Hasina told a meeting with senior officials of the labour and employment ministry on Sunday, according to reports by national news agencies.
“I think such an unlawful trend might be stopped if the fortune-seekers who are leaving the country illegally are punished side-by-side with the middlemen,” she said.
Hasina directed the ministry to conduct public information campaigns targeting potential illegal immigrants, “so they don’t feel the need to give money to the middlemen to go abroad illegally seeking work, so they don’t fall into this trap”.
The Bangladeshi prime minister claimed that her government has implemented several initiatives to improve the well-being of potential illegal immigrants and regretted that, despite this, some still opt for an “uncertain journey”.
“Why are they going? It is not correct that all of them are doing this because of poverty. It seems as though they are running after the golden deer, they think a lot of money can be earned abroad. This is a sort of mental illness. They could have led a comfortable life and found better jobs here,” she added.
Some 3,000 illegal migrants, including Rohingyas -- a Muslim minority fleeing persecution in Myanmar -- and Bangladeshis, fleeing poverty at home, have landed in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand in the past two weeks.
A crisis was triggered in early May when Thailand, the first stop for illegal migrants on their way to Southeast Asia, launched a campaign to undermine human-trafficking there.
Hasina’s statements are the strongest made by Bangladesh, source of many of the illegal migrants, since the beginning of the crisis.
Around 30,000 Rohingya refugees reside in Bangladesh, as do tens of thousands of others who do not have refugee status there and are thus not legally permitted to seek work, nor access education or the justice system.
