Bangkok: No escape for officials in trafficking

BANGKOK: Thailand’s junta leader on Friday said government officials involved in the illicit trade in migrants would not be spared and vowed to “eradicate” the industry, days before the release of an influential US report ranking nations on their anti-trafficking efforts.
The kingdom, a longstanding trafficking hub, has been at pains to show it is cracking down on the illicit trade in migrants since the US relegated Thailand to the lowest tier of countries accused of failing to combat the problem in its State Department report last year.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar have been trafficked or smuggled through Thailand’s southern provinces and into Malaysia in recent years.
They have been joined by increasing numbers of Bangladeshi economic migrants, some of whom have in recent weeks recounted horror stories of kidnap and coercion into a transnational trade in humans.
A belated crackdown by Thai authorities in May led to the discovery of dozens of shallow graves at an abandoned people-smuggling camp, sparking an ongoing migrant crisis with smugglers abandoning their human cargo at sea.