Sunday Times 2
Thai authorities resume dig at migrant mass grave site
View(s):PADANG BESAR, Thailand, May 2 (AFP) -Thai authorities today resumed the excavation of a mass grave site in a remote patch of jungle where migrants believed to be from Myanmar and Bangladesh were held for months by people smugglers in appalling conditions.
Eight bodies have been recovered so far from the abandoned camp in Sadao district, in Songkhla province, a few hundred metres (yards) from the border with Malaysia.
The grim discovery has once again exposed Thailand’s central role in a regional human trafficking trade.
Four shallow holes in the dirt a short walk behind the camp mark where the bodies were retrieved, an AFP reporter at the scene said, while white ribbons tied to a few dozen bamboo poles delineated suspected new graves.
The cause of the migrants’ deaths is not yet clear, but details emerged today of the conditions they endured, in what Thailand’s police chief has described as a “virtual prison camp”.
Doctors treating the two sole survivors — men aged 25 and 35 — told AFP their patients were suffering from a range of ailments.
Doctors said the men had not been fully identified but were from either Bangladesh or Myanmar.