Published on December 31, 2019, by Greeley Pulitze
Police have arrested a man who they believe has trafficked at least 200 Rohingya refugees into Thailand on their way to Malaysia.
56-year-old Charin Chuenchom was arrested over the weekend at a house in Ratchaburi, east of Bangkok. Chanin consequently confessed and was handed over to authorities for prosecution
The Rohingya are a stateless, mainly Muslim ethnic group living in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. They are not permitted to hold Burmese citizenship and have faced historical persecution culminating in the August 2017 attacks on them by the Burmese army (Tatmadaw). There were an estimated 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar before the 2016–17 crisis in which many fled, many by sea and others as refugees crossing the northern border into Bangladesh.
Thailand does not recognise Rohingya as refugees and in the past has arrested, detained and deported them back to Myanmar.
In 2013 the UN described the Rohingya as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, comparing their conditions to apartheid and accusing the Tatmadaw of “genocide”.
Police believe Chanin was a key player in a human trafficking gang, including a former railway policeman, illegally moving Rohingya people out of Myanmar through Thailand to Malaysia. The Bangkok Post reports that they charged each migrant 12,000 baht for ‘safe’ passage to Malaysia.
“We believe the gang have smuggled Rohingya people into Thailand more than 20 times, with 10-15 people each time, and collected more than 4 million baht,” police told Bangkok Post.
Authorities arrested 14 Rohingya migrants and two Thai smugglers on a train in Nakhon Si Thammarat in January last year. They suspect Chanin used stolen identities to buy their train tickets. He’s been charged with smuggling migrants and human trafficking.
The train was headed for the Thai-Malaysian border. The migrants were extremely hungry as they had no food and only a little drinking water.
SOURCE: Chiang Rai Times | Bangkok Post
- The Thaiger- https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/crime/thai-policeman-arrested-as-key-suspect-in-human-trafficking-of-rohingya
Two Thai soldiers face rare murder charges in restive south
ReplyDeletePublished on Dec 26th, 2019
Two soldiers in Thailand’s south have been charged with the murder of civilians, a military spokesman said yesterday, in a rare rebuke in the insurgency-torn region where rights groups have long demanded greater transparency.
The two turned themselves in on Dec 20 and are now out on bail, Internal Security Operations Command spokesman Pramote Prom-in said. He gave no details about the victims.
“There will be an investigation and we will follow the legal procedures,” he said.
The charges come months after a nationwide furore over the death in a separate case of Abdulloh Esormusor, a suspected insurgent who fell into a coma after interrogation at an army camp.
Advertisement
The Thai military rejected allegations of torture and urged the public to wait for the result of an official inquiry.
A decade-old separatist insurgency in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely ethnic Malay-Muslim southern provinces has killed nearly 7,000 people since 2004, says Deep South Watch, a group that monitors the violence.
- Reuters
- Mkini
- https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/504894