139 graves, 28 torture camps
Malaysian police said yesterday 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.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. This is the first time Malaysia unearthed such graves.
"It's a very sad scene... To us even one is serious and we have found 139," Malaysia's Inspector General of Police, Khalid Abu Bakar, told reporters in the northern state of Perlis. "We are working closely with our counterparts in Thailand. We will find the people who did this," he added.
The grisly find follows the discovery of similar shallow graves on the Thai side of the border earlier this month, which helped trigger a regional crisis. After a crackdown on the camps by Thai authorities, traffickers abandoned thousands of migrants in rickety boats in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.
"We were shocked by the cruelty," said Khalid, describing conditions at the 28 abandoned camps, scattered along a 50 km (30 mile) stretch of the Thai border, around which the graves were found in an operation that began on May 11.
Past Reuters investigations have shown ransoms demands ranging from $1,200 to $1,800, a fortune for impoverished migrants used to living on a dollar or two a day.
Pictures of the camps shown to journalists by Malaysian police showed basic wooden huts built in forest clearings.
Khalid said bullet casings were found in the vicinity and added there were signs that torture had been used, without elaborating. Metal chains were found near some graves.
The first decomposed body was brought down to a police camp set up at the foot of the mountains where the camps were found on yesterday evening, an operation that took nearly five hours due to the roughness of the terrain.
"The body was only bones and little bit of clothing on it," said Rizani Che Ismail, officer in charge of Padang Besar police department, adding that the cause of death was not immediately apparent.
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.
INTERNATIONAL SOLUTION
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak yesterday urged Japan and others in the global community to help tackle Southeast Asia's migrant crisis, saying it requires "an international solution".
Najib, on the second day of a three-day visit to Japan, held talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
"I also took the opportunity to brief the latest challenge that we have, which is the boat people Rohingyas," Najib told reporters after the summit.
"It is also an international problem, which requires an international solution," the Malaysian PM said.
"Therefore anything Japan can do to help us alleviate this problem will certainly be very much welcome."
Najib made the remarks hours after he said on his Facebook and Twitter accounts that he was "deeply concerned" by the discovery of mass graves of suspected illegal migrants in northern Malaysia, and vowed to find those responsible.
In a joint statement with Najib, Abe welcomed the accord between Malaysia and Indonesia, "acknowledging the dire humanitarian circumstances with regard to the current development concerning the irregular movement of people".
Rights groups have long accused Malaysian authorities of not doing enough to curb human-smuggling.
The Malaysian discovery of graves 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.
MALAYSIA'S ROLE QUESTIONED
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 traffic 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.
Malaysia's IGP said Malaysian police found the jungle sites after reacting to the Thai graves discovery.
But several Malaysian villagers told AFP yesterday 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.
IGP 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.
THEY ARE JUST BONES
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says since the Thai crackdown, they have found several people roaming in the Thai forests.
Jeffrey Labovitz, chief of mission in Thailand for the IOM, said they had screened people rescued from detention or shelters in Thailand and found some infected with beriberi - a disease caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency.
"It's people who are skeletal, they have no fat on their body they're just bones. They can no longer support their weight," he told the BBC.
"They are no longer a commodity to smugglers they're an example to others that they have to pay."
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok says that as on the Thai side, the Malaysian camps are situated in an area with a strong military and police presence, and questions will be asked about why the authorities took no action before now - action that might have saved lives.
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