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Malaysia to Charge 4 Thai Over 139 Mass Rohingya Graves
Malaysia’s home minister said a court will charge four Thai nationals for the 2015 discovery of more than 100 human-smuggling victims’ graves at jungle camps near Thailand.
The Thai suspects were extradited to Malaysia on Friday as part of a 2017 extradition request by Malaysia and an investigation into the finding of mass remains of Rohingya smuggling victims in shallow graves in Wang Kelian, a village in Perlis state.
“They were handed to us on June 22 and will be brought to the Sessions Court in Perlis to be charged on Friday,” Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said.
A senior Malaysian police officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters, said the Perlis police head would attend a Thai national press conference on Friday.
Malaysian authorities identified 139 mass graves and 28 abandoned camps on the rocky hills along the Thai-Malaysia border at Bukit Wang Burma in Wang Kelian in January 2015, but they delayed four months to exhume the bodies.
The tombs contained over 100 bone remains of Myanmar’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority and undocumented Bangladeshi migrants.
Thailand began a crackdown on illegal immigration in early May 2015 after human smugglers abandoned jungle camps with a cluster of similar mass graves.
Nearly 3,000 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh, abandoned by traffickers on boats, arrived in Malaysia and Indonesia. After the Thai burials made headlines, Malaysian officials publicised the Wang Kelian graves and recovered the victims’ bones.
Last October, a Malaysian government-commissioned panel inquiry study found that “a more proactive step in border control” may have prevented the torture and murders of smuggling victims.
“It did not require any extraordinary effort to detect what had happened in Bukit Wang Burma,” the Royal Commission of Inquiry report stated.
“The Commission considers Wang Kelian a humanitarian tragedy that should never have happened in this day and age.”
No Malaysian was charged for the 2015 discovery. Only four foreigners have been imprisoned.
Thailand tried 102 people tied to 32 graves on their side of the border. One three-star general died while serving an 82-year sentence.
Malaysia’s home minister attributed this new development to Thailand-Malaysia collaboration. Malaysia wanted 10 Thai nationals extradited in 2017.
Saifuddin said four of the 10 individuals were tracked down and produced in a Thai court for extradition due to tight cooperation between the two nations.
The Thai Court of Appeal ordered the four defendants to be extradited to Malaysia on March 30. However, National Defence University of Malaysia professor Mohd. Mizan Mohammad Aslam wants a more aggressive Malaysian probe.
“Many people have been arrested and imprisoned in Thailand for being involved in the crime,” he told BenarNews.
“On our side, we have yet to take any action seriously; there has been no form of trial.”
He asked Malaysian authorities to arrest domestic culprits. “If no serious action is taken, such crimes can flourish again and create another Wang Kelian,” he stated.
