By P Prem Kumar
KUALA LUMPUR
The remains of more than 20 suspected victims of human trafficking have been uncovered on the Thai-Malay border after heavy rains.
The discovery occurred in the same area where in May police found 139 graves scattered around 28 transit camps abandoned by a human trafficking syndicate.
The Star Online reported Sunday that 24 bodies - believed to be those of Muslim Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants - were dug up from 19 graves at Wang Burma hill.
The news website quoted unnamed sources as saying that some of the remains were buried in shallow graves.
National Security Council chairman Shahidan Kassim confirmed the discovery, telling the website that it had recently rained heavily in the area, "the downpour sweeping away the soil and revealing the remains."
“We don’t know how long the victims were buried or if there was a transit camp there,” he said.
The Star reported that the remains were discovered a few days ago. All are suspected to have died from abuse or malnourishment.
They have been sent for post-mortems at a local hospital.
On May 1, dozens of bodies were found in graves in an abandoned human trafficking camp in a Thai forest bordering Malaysia -- triggering an official campaign to wipe out human smuggling networks from Thai territory.
Over the next month, migrants washed up on Malaysian, Indonesian and Thai shores as traffickers abandoned the smuggling boats at sea.
While Malaysia and Indonesia decided at a May 20 tri-nation conference to allow the boats to come ashore, Thailand persisted in pushing them back after providing them with water and food.
Up until Sunday, 106 bodies had been exhumed from pits at trafficking camps found in jungles along the Thai-Malay border.
Rohingya have been fleeing persecution in Buddhist majority Myanmar in the tens of thousands since sectarian violence erupted in 2012, while Bangladeshis are mostly escaping extreme poverty in the hope of employment in Malaysia.
