Arakan News Agency
Checkpoints have been set up by anti-human trafficking officials on the main road towards Phuket to ensure hundreds of Rohingya Muslims, arrested at the weekend, are not suddenly trucked south to Thailand’s notorious secret border jungle camps.
The checkpoints, manned by staff of the district chief of Takuapa, represent the new mood of resistance by some residents along the Andaman Sea to the inhumane trade in people that has flourished down Thailand’s western coast over the past five years.
These people want to end the brutality, the rapes and the deaths that have been occurring in hidden camps along the Thai-Malaysia border, destroying the lives of Rohingya and with them, Thailand’s reputation.
Later today, officials from the Department of Special Investigation and the Army’s Internal Security Operations Command from Bangkok will begin a probe into whether human trafficking is flourishing along Thailand’s Andaman coast, especially in the provinces of Ranong and Phang Nga.
Activists and officials from Phang Nga say that some of the seven men arrested with the latest 256 boatpeople in Ranong were previously arrested just days ago in Phang Nga and charged with trafficking 134 Rohingya muslims.
Source: The PhuketWAN
Image Source: The Phuket WAN
