Graves potentially holding bodies of Rohingyas being digged up in Malaysia
Malaysian forensics teams have begun the task of digging up dozens of graves believed to contain the remains of migrants from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim community in Myanmar.
Mohammad Bahar Alias, a regional police official, said on Tuesday that the teams exhumed a body from a shallow grave at an abandoned jungle camp used by human traffickers in the northern state of Perlis.
The official added that digging continued at other graves across the state, which borders Thailand.
“Forensics teams have found one human body so far,” media outlets quoted Alias as saying, adding, “There are graves all over this area.”
Malaysian police recently announced the discovery of 139 grave sites and 28 “detention” camps amid the worsening migrant crisis in the region.
Malaysian national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar has said that the largest of the camps could house as many as 300 people; another has a capacity of 100, while the rest could keep about 20 people each.
The dead are believed to be Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh, who either died of diseases or starved to death. Smugglers abandoned the sick men when they moved the Rohingya migrants across the border into Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Home Minister Zahid Hamidi said on Tuesday that police were probing the possibility that government officials, including some from the Malaysian Forestry Department, may be involved in human trafficking. “Our investigations showed that they are collaborating with each other, not only (locally) but they have international links including Thai, Bangladesh and Myanmar.”
Thai police in early May found secret human-trafficking jungle camps on their side of the border and dozens of shallow graves. The graves were discovered at a remote camp in the mountains of the southern province of Songkhla, which borders Malaysia.
Thai officials had described the site as a virtual “prison camp,” where migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh were held in makeshift bamboo cells.
In recent weeks, thousands of migrants, including Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis, have fled their countries on boat and have arrived in neighboring Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Many are in serious need of food and water.
Rohingya Muslims have been persecuted and faced torture, neglect, and repression since Myanmar’s independence in 1948.
JR/HSN/HJL
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