Arakan News Agency
Australians are being urged to ask the Thai Government to investigate claims of human trafficking of Rohingya people.
”ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity were committed by security forces against the Rohingya ethnic group, resulting in the murders of hundreds of Rohingya and causing more than 100,000 of them to fled the country while leaving another 140,000 displaced and living in dire conditions.
Violence and discrimination against the Rohingya, who are Muslims, has been fuelled by Buddhist extremists and there had been sectarian violence between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Arakanese in Rakhine (Arakan) State in June 2012. The Burmese government calls the Rohingya illegal ”Bengali” migrants from Bangladesh.
Most of the 1.1 million Rohingya living in Burma’s western Rakhine State are denied citizenship. Human Rights Watch has alleged on-going persecution of the largely stateless Rohingya.
Thousands of the Rohingya fled Burma on often-rickety boats were then intercepted. They were then passed through ”trafficking camps” in southern Thailand. Traffickers forced the asylum seekers to call relatives in Malaysia and Thailand to demand a ransom of around $2000 for their return.
Those who could not find a relative to pay the ransom were reportedly sold as slaves on Thai fishing boats or as manual laborers on farms. Some were murdered at the camps and others died of disease.
Media reports allege that Thai officials collaborated with the traffickers by transferring Rohingya held in Thailand to the custody of the traffickers. The UN has called for an investigation into the reports Thai officials moved refugees from Burma into human trafficking rings.
On January 27, 2014, after pressure from the US Government and the UN, Thai authorities raided one of the trafficking camps and took into custody 531 people.
source: Phuketwan
