Signs of fear and abuse
Barbed wire and a human jawbone hinted at the brutality in suspected people-smuggling camps in Malaysia as police yesterday began the grisly task of exhuming dozens of graves along the Thai border.
Police escorted journalists on a gruelling hike into a thickly jungle state park in northern Malaysia where authorities have found 28 such camps in the latest grim turn in Southeast Asia's migrant crisis.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Fearing possible attack from armed traffickers lurking in the woods, police advised reporters to hit the ground if they heard any gunshots during the four-hour round-trip slog up a remote mountain.
Via a jungle path that was clearly well-trodden, reporters were led to a single small camp in a forest clearing, where barbed wire surrounded two rickety structures made of jungle saplings and bamboo, with tarpaulins lying on the ground.
Malaysian police forensic teams, digging with hoes and shovels, began pulling out bodies from shallow graves found in abandoned jungle camps where an inter-governmental body said hundreds of victims of human traffickers may be buried.
"We have found 37 graves (at the camp) but we have only recovered one body so far," said local police official Muhammad Bahar Alias.
Malaysian police have said a total of 139 gravesites had been found near abandoned camps spread out along the border and capable of housing hundreds of people.
The discovery of similar sites in Thailand in early May resulted in a Thai police crackdown that severely disrupted the steady flow of migrants that courses from Bangladesh and Myanmar down through Thailand and into Malaysia.
Malaysian police said it remained unclear how many bodies were buried in the inaccessible corner of mountainous jungle just a few hundred metres (yards) from Thailand.
But the Malaysian findings appeared to indicate a system of camps and graves larger than those over the border.
The camp visited yesterday seemed largely to have been picked clean of most evidence indicating what went on there.
But on the ground lay a human lower jaw with several teeth still in it.
A low cage-like pen also could be seen, but it was unknown whether it was used for livestock or people.
Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told a news briefing in Geneva that the body's representative in the region "predicts hundreds more (bodies) will be found in the days to come".
SANDALS, TEDDY BEAR
Photos from some of the other camps, provided by police, indicated the presence of small children, including a pair of sandals fit for a toddler, and a pink teddy bear.
Malaysian police have said the camps were discovered in operations launched following the Thai discoveries, and that they were occupied perhaps as recently as two weeks ago.
Several Malaysian villagers had told AFP on Monday that bedraggled Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants had become a common sight in the area weeks before the current crisis erupted.
Some bore ugly scars or had bloodied feet from trekking across the frontier, and would beg locals for food and water.
Many were later picked up in private cars and driven away by unknown people, residents said.
Apparently abandoned in haste, what remained of the camp visited by Reuters reporters 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.
A large plastic water tank could be seen, suggesting a degree of permanence.
There were also signs of brutality, including coils of barbed wire around what appeared to have been makeshift cells and a low cage, too small to stand in, that police said may have been used to punish captives.
Residents in Wang Kelian, the nearest town on the Malaysian side of the border, said they were used to seeing migrants in the area.
"They are often starving, not eaten for weeks," said Abdul Rahman Mahmud, who runs a small hostel. "They eat seeds or leaves or whatever they can find. It's a real pity and it's sad to see this."
Activists say the trafficking trade thrives likely with the help of corrupt Malaysian and Thai officials.
Before the discovery of the graves, government officials had dismissed the suggestion that such sites existed on Malaysian soil.
The grisly discoveries in Malaysia after the uncovering of similar graves on the Thai side of the border triggered a regional crisis.
"We don't know if there is a link between the Thai camps and Malaysia camps," Phuttichart Ekachan, deputy chief of Thailand's Provincial Police Region 9, told Reuters.
"It is possible that because of the Thai crackdown some of the camps moved and some of them (migrants) then walked over or escaped to the Thai side. It is possible but it isn't something we have been able to confirm."
State news agency Bernama quoted Malaysia's police chief, Inspector General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar, as saying that the camps were thought to have been occupied since 2013, and two were "only abandoned between two and three weeks ago".
Khalid told reporters on Monday that police had been "shocked by the cruelty" of the camps, where he said there were signs of torture.
OFFICIAL COMPLICITY?
The scale of the discoveries has raised questions about the level of complicity by officials on both sides of the border.
Malaysia's Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said yesterday that initial investigations revealed links between forest rangers and smuggling syndicates, Bernama reported, adding that some had been detained by police as part of the probe.
"We suspect some of them were involved...but we are working with the forestry department in terms of enforcement as they are supposed to carry out enforcement in the area," he was quoted as telling reporters at parliament.
The Malaysian government said it was investigating whether local forestry officials were involved with the people-smuggling gangs believed responsible for such graves discovered around grim camps along the border with Thailand.
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