Kuala Lumpur: Horrifying details have emerged about the treatment meted out to the migrants who were kept as captives in Malaysia's abandoned jungle camps and left to die and buried in 139 mass graves if ransom was not paid.
As Malaysia sent its forensics experts for exhumation of the mass graves, National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar described it as “a very sad scene”.
"I am shocked. We never expected this kind of cruelty," Khalid told reporters at a police outpost in the town of Wang Kelian.
Jeffrey Labovitz, head of Thailand's International Organisation for Migration, said that the migrants were “tortured, not fed, and contained, and they died”.
IOM: These people were examples to others that if you did not pay,you were going to die http://t.co/L2gE1pMYNS via @amworldtodaypm #Rohingya
— IOM (@IOM_news) May 26, 2015
Police chief Khalid added that some migrants were apparently held at the camps in "human cages" made of wood and barbed wire.
The discovery of 139 mass graves in Malaysia's abandoned jungle camps used by human traffickers on the border with Thailand has put the spotlight on the grim extent to which the region's migrant crisis has spiralled.
The graves are suspected to contain the bodies of migrants fleeing from Myanmar and Bangladesh, most of them being Rohingya Muslims.
As Southeast Asian governments have launched crackdowns in recent weeks amid intensified international pressure and media scrutiny, traffickers have abandoned camps on land and boats at sea to avoid arrest.
Since May 10 alone, more than 3,600 people — about half of them from Bangladesh and half Rohingya from Myanmar — have landed ashore in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Thousands more are believed to be trapped at sea in boats abandoned by their captains.
Malaysia and Indonesia announced last week that they would provide temporary shelter for up to one year for migrants recently found or still stranded at sea. The US has said it will settle some of them permanently.
Over the past three weeks, thousands of victims of people smuggling have landed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, after horrific voyages of up to four months. Thousands more refugees, stateless people and economic migrants are believed to be still at sea. Those who have landed tell harrowing tales of overcrowding, beatings and a chronic lack of food and water, which in some cases resulted in extreme violence.
With Agency Inputs
