PUTRAJAYA: Illegal immigrants who were trying to enter Malaysia through Thailand were kept in enclosures in human trafficking camps for months and extorted to pay about RM6,500 to the syndicates there to cross over the border, or risk being beaten to death.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the Wang Kelian camps and mass graves was told that captives who were unable to make payment would be brutally tortured, and they were also forced to bury fellow victims who succumbed to injuries in shallow makeshift graves just meters from where they were held.
The eighteenth witness in the RCI, Inspector Husyairi Musa, who was the then chief investigator at the Padang Besar district police headquarters, said this was based on statements recorded from several victims who managed to escape the camp into Malaysia in May 2015.
“We arrested six Myanmar illegal immigrants, who at that time, was being ferried by a taxi near the border. In their statements, they claim that they were fleeing the conflict in their country. They took about 15 days by boat with over 300 people to reach Thailand, before they were detained by the syndicate.
“They were then brought to a camp, and kept there about three to four months. Only those who paid RM6,500 are released and allowed into Malaysia,” he said, here, yesterday.
“One of them told us that victims were being tortured if they fail to make payment. About 62 people died during the time I was there, either from being beaten, or food poisoning. And the captives themselves were asked to bury the dead,” he added.
Husyairi said those who acted suspiciously would also be roughed up by the watch guards and placed in separate, much smaller cages as warning to the others.
According to the inspector, the six detained illegal immigrants had escaped the trafficking camp after Thailand military conducted a raid at the location, forcing syndicate members to make a run.
“They (immigrants) took that opportunity to break free from their enclosures and ran into the jungle without a clear direction for about three days. They then met a Thai who told them they had entered Malaysia,” he said, adding that the Thai man had led them to a taxi near the border in Malaysia.
Husyairi said the taxi driver, a Malaysian, was also arrested with the six immigrants, and was charged under Section 26J of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti- Smuggling of Migrants Act for transporting illegal immigrants and fined RM20,000.
The RCI public hearing will continue on May 7.
