MASS GRAVES IN THAI JUNGLE Lone survivor says kept captive for nine months.

The lone survivor of a death camp for sea migrants, discovered in a jungle in southern Thailand, had reportedly been kidnapped from Bangladesh’s coastal district of Cox’s Bazar and held captive for nine months.
The victim told local media that he came from Narsingdi district in Bangladesh and the traffickers had tortured him for ransom, but he could not contact his family in the nine months of captivity.
Anuzar, 28, who was left to die in a mass grave of around 30 victims, was rescued on Friday by the Thai authorities. He was being treated at a local hospital under police guard as he might give clues to the racket of human traffickers active in Thailand, according to international media reports.
‘The Bangladesh embassy in Bangkok expects consular access to the victim on Monday. At first we will try to verify his nationality as he did not have any valid documents,’ director general of the South-East Asian wing of the foreign ministry, Ashud Ahmed, told New Age on Monday.
He said the government would take steps for his repatriation if he was identified as a Bangladeshi national.
The local administration in Narsingdi was yet to be informed about the matter, said foreign ministry officials.
At least 32 ‘mass graves’ of illegal migrants, most of them from Bangladesh and Myanmar, were discovered in remote and rugged mountainous areas in Thailand’s Songkhla province bordering Malaysia, which was widely covered by the international media on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, particularly from the persecuted Rohingya Muslim community, make dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand, a trafficking route often on the way to south of Malaysia and beyond.
‘The Thai authorities have located mass graves containing remains of 32 people reportedly from Bangladesh and Myanmar in a remote jungle in Sadao district of Thailand near the border with Malaysia,’ said a press release of the foreign ministry.
Bangladesh embassy in Thailand has been in touch with the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of social development and human security of Thailand, and sought details of the incident, it added.
The Thai authorities informed them that the survivor was being treated with care in a local hospital and his condition was stable and healthy, according to the release.
In an interview with Thai online newspaper Phuketwan, Anuzar said from the hospital bed in the southern town of Pedang Besar on Sunday afternoon that he had been abducted from Cox’s Bazar but had no money to pay a ransom.
‘I want my mother and brother to know I am alive,’ he said. ‘I was not able to contact them to ask them to pay the ransom.’
Thai authorities raided the large camp, hidden in dense jungle in Songkhla province, and found Anuzar alive.
Anuzar, who looked hungry and wasted, said that the dead had mostly been held in the camp for longer than his nine months of captivity, according to the news portal.
‘We were the people who could not pay the ransom so they kept us captive and did not really care whether we lived or died,’ the lone survivor told Phuketwan.
Police believe the traffickers abandoned the camp two days ago, possibly fleeing with able-bodied women and men who had more value than Anuzar.
‘Eight brokers controlled the camp,’ Anuzar said. He said he believed that 10 Bangladeshis were among the dead scattered near the camp, along with at least 30 Rohingyas.
‘I knew three Bangladeshis – Usman, Belawal and Sahid – and they were among the dead,’ Anuzar was quoted as saying.
Many Bangladeshis are shipped along with Rohingyas by traffickers promising good jobs in Malaysia. Some of them said they were simply abducted.
An international racket with their local agents usually hold the victims hostages in remote bordering areas of Thailand for ransoms from their relatives back home, said officials in Dhaka.
AFP reported that Thailand’s borders with Malaysia were notorious for its network of secret camps where smuggled migrants were held, usually against their will until relatives pay up hefty ransoms.
Twenty-six bodies exhumed from a mass grave near a suspected human trafficking camp in southern Thailand did not bear signs of violent death, police said on Sunday, following initial forensic examinations at the site, Reuters reported on Sunday.
Dozens of police and rescue volunteers trekked into the mountains on Saturday to a jungle camp in Songkhla province that authorities have linked to human trafficking and dug up 21 bodies.
Five bodies were retrieved on Friday from the camp, which is a few hundred metres from Thailand’s border with Malaysia, bringing the total to 26.
In October, 2014, a total of 130 Bangladesh nationals had reportedly been rescued after being abducted and shipped to Thailand to be sold as ‘slaves’. The rescued men were promised well-paid jobs before being drugged and kidnapped.

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