By Max Constant and Ainur Romah
BANGKOK
Thai officials say they have found an abandoned human trafficking camp in the country's south that is suspected of holding between 800 and 1000 people.
It is the largest camp found so far in the region since a massive search was launched May 1 for compounds that have been harbouring Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants.
An Anadolu Agency reporter travelling Tuesday with a team of military, police and forensic experts in the forested mountains of Sadao district, bordering Malaysia, said they had stumbled on the camp around 3 kilometers from an area where 33 corpses were exhumed May 1.
He described it as solidly built, permanent, and around one year old.
Twenty-one stilted huts served as “bedrooms,” and there were four additional huts where food was prepared, he added.
The camp appeared abandoned, as clothes and various tools were dispersed around the compound.
He said that police had told him that they think the smugglers had fled in a hurry, taking with them the Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshi who were detained when the first camp was discovered.
Police have said they believe it belonged to the same trafficking network.
No graves were found in the camp discovered Tuesday.
“We suspect that this large camp was mostly used as a detention place,” police told Anadolu Agency.
On May 6, Junta Chief-cum-Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha gave officials in the south ten days to “eliminate all human trafficking camps.”
Since then, combined teams of police and military officers have been scouring the Thai-Malaysian border.
They have found five empty trafficking camps and 250 Bangladeshi and Rohingya wandering the forest, apparently abandoned by the smugglers.
Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities were tracking a suspected smuggling ship Tuesday which approached the coast of the western province of Aceh on Sunday, but turned back.
“The migrants’ boat left Indonesian waters and took the direction of Malaysia,” Indonesian Colonel Dwi Agus Laksana, commander of Lhokseumawe navy base, told Antara news agency.
Smugglers are thought to be dumping migrants on Malaysian and Indonesian shores, in fear of being tracked by the ever-increasing police operations.
On Monday, 400 people were picked up on Indonesia’s northwestern coast of Aceh, taking the number of Bangladeshi and Rohingya discovered in the country to more than 900.
They are presently being kept at a sports facility and in police buildings.
Police Chief Supt Harrith Kam Abdullya told AA Tuesday that local authorities had now detained all who had come ashore.
Indonesian authorities are coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to assist them.
Also Monday, around 1,000 more migrants washed up on the coast of a Malaysian northern resort island.
Langkawi police said that three boats arrived during the night to offload migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The United Nations considers Rohingya to be the world’s most persecuted ethnic minority.
