THE discovery of mass graves in Thai jungles of poor migrant workers including large number of Bangladeshi nationals, has raised question on how this sad, illegal human trafficking is taking place. We would like to say, this degrading and shameful trade must come to an end and to achieve this goal, joint initiatives must be at work by the governments of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia to root out organized gangs running this trade. As we see, it has become a multi-billion dollar trade thriving as a modern day slavery. Traffickers are luring poor people on promise of good job in Malaysia and hold them hostage in the midway demanding huge ransom. Their failure earned traffickers’ ire who then leave them in jungle camps to perish at the end. We know traffickers are operating through the jungle corridor of Thailand and the sea lane of the region and the trade flourished unabated until last week when the jungle cruelties leaked out to international media to force the Thai police to mount raids at some jungle camps to unearth the gravesites and human bodies scattered around.
The disclosure has not only raised question how the Thai authorities were indifferent to the jungle trade although some news had always leaked to the press. We also wonder how the authorities in Bangladesh allowed it to continue particularly from the coastline of Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf regions. The New Nation and many other national dailies reported on the illegal human trafficking from Bangladesh coastline on many occasions but it did not stop despite the presence of our coast guard in the sea. News report on Sunday initially highlighted the discovery of 32 graves of victims in the Thai jungles. Twenty-six bodies were found – badly decayed – from shallow graves covered by bamboo and a few feet of dirt in them. Two individuals were also rescued, one of them a Bangladeshi national from the campsite. Then broke out the news of another gravesite where more than 50 graves were detected with some other camps with smaller numbers of buried bodies scattered near the Thai-Malaysia border. We fear there may be many more. Thailand’s police chief said the campsites were “virtual prison camps” where migrants were held in makeshift bamboo cages.
According to the UN Refugee agency; over 87,000 people embarked on voyages to Malaysia from Myanmar and Bangladesh since 2012. Poor Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, who are the world’s most persecuted minority community, are the main victims whose bodies are now exhumed from Thai jungles. As we see, the tragedy can be only compared in the dawning of people in thousands in the Mediterranean in their desperate attempt to escape from the war ravage in Middle East and African countries. In both cases; people are dying to escape from extreme poverty and none but the rich are destroying peace of the poor.
It is not enough to talk about exploitation by human traffickers. Every government has a big responsibility to have jobs for its own people. The jobless people within the country desperately look for opportunities outside for their own survival. So blaming human traffickers only cannot be the whole solution for the human crisis. Jobless people should be seen as an international human problem and must be solved in cooperation with other countries.
