BANGKOK: Three local Thai officials and a Myanmar national have been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking after the remains of 26 migrants were found in a mass grave in southern Thailand, police said on Monday.
The decomposed bodies of migrants thought to have come from Myanmar or Bangladesh were exhumed over the weekend at an abandoned jungle camp in the Sadao district of Songkhla province.
The discovery of the site, just a few hundred metres from the border with Malaysia, once again exposed the kingdom's central role in the regional human trafficking trade.
Tens of thousands of migrants, mainly from Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority but also increasingly Rohingya from Bangladesh, have made the dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand, with many bound for Malaysia.
On Monday police said they arrested three local male officials in Songhkla, and were holding a fourth man from Myanmar in Nakhon Sri Thammarat province after his arrest on Tuesday.
"One is a member of the local municipal council and the other two are assistant village headmen," said a senior police official, who did not want to be named, of the Thai men arrested, adding that the other man in detention was a Myanmar national.
He also said a further four arrest warrants had been issued in connection with the mass grave but gave no more details.
Nakhon Sri Thammarat deputy police commander Anuchon Chamart said the Myanmar national - Soe Naing, known as Anwar - was a "central figure who ran camps and sought ransoms" in a major people-smuggling operation.
Agence France-Presse
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/thailand-arrests-3-officials-over-migrant-deaths/
No comments:
Post a Comment