BUKIT WANG BURMA, Malaysia, (Reuters) – Malaysian police forensic teams, digging with hoes and shovels, yesterday began pulling out bodies from shallow graves found in abandoned jungle camps where an inter-governmental body said hundreds of victims of human traffickers may be buried.
The Malaysian government said it was investigating whether local forestry officials were involved with the people-smuggling gangs believed responsible for nearly 140 such graves discovered around grim camps along the border with Thailand.
The dense forests of southern Thailand and northern Malaysia have been a major stop-off point for smugglers bringing people to Southeast Asia by boat from Myanmar, most of them Rohingya Muslims who say they are fleeing persecution, and Bangladesh.
Authorities took a group of journalists to one of the camps, nestled in a gully in thick jungle up a steep, well-worn path about an hour’s walk from the nearest road, where a Reuters witness saw the first body removed on Tuesday afternoon.
Malaysian police said on Monday they had found 139 graves, some containing more than one body, around 28 camps scattered along a 50-km (30-mile) stretch of the border in the northern state of Perlis.
Joel Millman, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told a news briefing in Geneva that the body’s representative in the region “predicts hundreds more (bodies) will be found in the days to come”.
