Malaysia starts exhuming bodies at jungle camps

FE Team | Published: May 27, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

BUKIT WANG BURMA (Malaysia), May 26 (Agencies): Malaysian police forensic teams, digging with hoes and shovels, began pulling out the remains of dozens of suspected victims of human traffickers on Tuesday 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.
On Tuesday authorities took a group of journalists to one of the camps, nestled in a gully in thick jungle up a steep, well-worn path about an hour's walk from the nearest road.
The first body was removed Tuesday 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.
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 help up to 400 people.
Meanwhile, reports from Yangon adds: Myanmar said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate 200 Bangladeshis rescued from a boat off the Myanmar coast last week.
Meantime, the Indonesian authorities are also going to send back Bangladeshi migrants who had recently ended up landing on its shores in a matter of weeks, according to Singapore-based newspaper The Straits Times.
Quoting an Indonesian immigration official, the The Straits Times in a report on Tuesday said the Indonesian authorities consider the Bangladeshis to be economic migrants who undertook the treacherous sea journey to South-east Asian countries such as Malaysia to escape poverty at home.
"The Bangladeshi government has committed to taking back all its citizens. Indonesia will do its best to help with the process," Mr Mirza Iskandar, investigation and enforcement director at the national immigration office in Jakarta, told The Straits Times.