MAY 28 — Yesterday the government of Malaysia claimed to know nothing about traffickers’ camps revealed in the country’s northern border — camps which held thousands of persecuted Burmese Rohingya and which show signs of torture and mass graves. Yet research from the international organisation Equal Rights Trust indicates this shock is merely a smokescreen to what they have known all along.        

“The Malaysian government has a great deal to answer for. They undoubtedly knew, by no later than 2010, that Burmese Rohingya were being regularly trafficked across the Malaysia-Thailand border,” said Equal Rights Trust’s Executive Director, Dimitrina Petrova.  She continued, “What is worse, is that the government failed to act on credible reports on the involvement of their own immigration officials in these practices. No one can know how many lives would have been saved if they had acted before now.”

In 2010, the Equal Rights Trust published, Trapped in the Cycle of Flight: Stateless Rohingya in Malaysia, which included testimony from Rohingya stating that Malay police and immigration officials would “deport” Rohingya into the hands of traffickers in exchange for cash.

The testimony from survivors described the appalling torture, extortion, and sale into bonded labour taking place in the Malaysian camps. Once in Thailand, the traffickers demanded payment and if that was received, Rohingya were trafficked back into Malaysia, their destination of choice. However in Malaysia, they were soon re-arrested, detained in camps, and deported again into the hands of traffickers. If they could not pay, they were sold into bonded labour in plantations and on shipping boats, an ordeal which few survived.

* The Equal Rights Trust is an independent international organisation combating discrimination and advancing equality worldwide. The Trust promotes a unified human rights framework on equality, focusing on the complex relationships between different types of disadvantage and developing strategies for translating the principles of equality into practice. The Trust currently works in over 40 countries, pursuing its objectives through advocacy, litigation, development of resources, and movement building. www.equalrightstrust.org

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.