Malaysia yesterday said it believes 139 people are buried in graves at remote detention camps used by people-smugglers on the Thai border that were discovered on the weekend.
“Based on the size of the graves, and after the area was cleared ... we have a clearer indication — single grave, single person,” Malaysian Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar told reporters.
When asked by reporters if he believed that there are 139 bodies, since Malaysia has previously said it had discovered 139 grave sites, Wan Junaidi said: “Yes.”
Photo: AFP
The minister said initial investigations showed the bodies were wrapped in white cloth, in accordance with Muslim tradition, and were marked with wooden sticks.
“Based on our findings so far, seems like proper burial, the bodies were wrapped in white cloth. It is like the Muslim burial... Some are shallow graves, not all,” Wan Junaidi said at a press conference in the border town of Wang Kelian.
Malaysian police said earlier this week that a total of 139 grave sites and 28 recently abandoned camps had been found along the northern border with Thailand, capable of housing hundreds of people.
Malaysian police believe they were used by human-traffickers and smugglers. Thai police early this month had uncovered similar camps on their side of the border.
They launched a crackdown that disrupted the flow of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar down through Thailand and across the land border into Malaysia.
That left boats loaded with hundreds of starving migrants stuck at sea. Malaysia and Indonesia recently agreed to let vessels land safely following an international outcry.
Malaysian police said 37 people have been arrested this year on suspicion of human-trafficking, but have given no details.
In yesterday’s press conference, Wan Junaidi said Malaysian security forces had not been patrolling the area where the grave sites were found because they were seen as being inaccessible.
Malaysian police commandos surveyed the area starting from May 11 after the discovery of the graves in Thailand, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing