Fifty arrest warrants issued against suspected Rohingya traffickers

SONGKHLA, THAILAND, May 11 (TNA) - Thai police have issued arrest warrants against about 50 suspects in the alleged trafficking of Rohingya Muslims. Deputy National Police Chief Police General Aek Angsananont told journalists of the update on Monday, saying that hunt for them was covering Songkhla and Satun Provinces in the Thai far South, with the latest suspect facing an arrest warrant on Sunday night. Police General Aek noted that a latest survey has found Padang Besar Sub-district in Songkhla's Sadao District was frequently used to send Rohingya migrants to Malaysia because it appears to be easier to cross the border on foot there than doing so in nearby Satun Province. The deputy national police chief also assured that 14 police officers who had already been transferred for allegedly supporting the human trafficking would be prosecuted if there was evidence to do so. Meanwhile, police in Songkhla's Rattaphum District brought 152 Rohingya, Bangladeshi and Myanmar people who were recently abandoned on the Kaeo Mountain Range in Songkhla's Hat Yai District to courts, 151 of them were charged with illegal immigration and one of them with human trafficking. Mulsim organizations and locals in Rattaphum are, in the meantime, donating necessities and food to the migrants, whose physical and mental health is improving because of treatment by Thai health officials. Updated reports said that provincial administrative officials of Songkhla's Hat Yai District and community leaders of Hat Yai's Chalung Sub-district jointly assisted 26 more Rohingya illegal migrants, six of whom are children, while they were walking down the Kaeo Mountain Range. An initial interrogation of the 26 Rohingya migrants, who were then led to a local mosque to be fed with food and water, through an interpreter found that they had traveled in a group of 225 Rohinyas, comprising many families, over the past 22 days destined for Malaysia, but they were later left out on the Kaeo Mountain Range by brokers who brought with them only members of the group who had paid them a trafficking fee; while they had no money but promised to work without receiving their wages for two years to pay for the fee to the brokers. The new 26 abandoned Rohingya migrants were later sent to a local police station for further legal procedures. So far, a total of 266 illegal Rohingya migrants have been assisted by authorities in Songkhla's Hat Yai, Sadao and Rattaphum Districts. (TNA)