“People smuggling” is somehow too benign a way to describe a modern tragedy. “Human trafficking” comes closer, because it hints at the slavery and ultimate savagery of the people who organize the covert movement of thousands of people across frontiers every day. Moreover, the expression “people smuggling” makes it sound like some sort of service industry. Maybe that was once true. Smugglers of contraband who knew the secret ways to pass through hills or jungles, avoiding official patrols, could as easily take people, who were probably a far higher value cargo. But as with any guide, the people being smuggled placed their safety and indeed their lives in the hands of the smugglers. And therein lies the greatest danger for those who pay to be spirited over borders. They are entirely in the hands of the smugglers. Often in a strange land with a strange language, they have to trust the people that they have paid to get them to where they want to go. It is now all too clear that smugglers regularly betray that trust. In Thailand, mass graves are being uncovered which almost certainly contain the bodies of Rohingya Muslims who were seeking to flee persecution in their native Burma. One grave contained 26 bodies. The location, an abandoned camp in Phang Nga province close to the Thai border with Malaysia, was clearly a staging post for the human traffickers. It was here that they sought to extract maximum value out of their trusting human cargo. By the time the Rohingya arrived at this place, they had already paid up front for their entire passage to Malaysia or Indonesia, Muslim countries where they might find safety. But so close to their goal, the Rohingya were told that there was a problem. More money was needed if they were to be taken on the final stage of their journey. Some will have given what little they had hidden on them. Others will have been forced to contact their families in Burma begging them to wire money to the people traffickers. Meanwhile, stuck on an island in a mangrove swamp, they were at the mercy of their captors. They were forced to pay for food. Sexual abuse appears to have occurred regularly. The threat of death hung over the camp. Those who protested and those whose families could not find the extra money were simply shot or beaten to death. This is a picture that has been repeated in Libya where the human traffickers hold their victims in compounds around desert towns such as Kufra and Sebha. It is now estimated that more migrants have died on the way to the Libyan coast, than have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in flimsy, overcrowded boats. A murder in the Libyan desert is far simpler than in Thailand. The human traffickers simply abandon in the middle of the desert, without food and water, the people who trusted them with their lives. The big difference with the Rohingya murders is that Thailand is very far from being the anarchic, failed state that is Libya today. Four men, one of them a Burmese, are in custody over the Phang Nga camp. But the trafficking network is far wider and has received protection from corrupt officials. Thailand needs to do a thorough job of cleaning up this wicked web of extortion, betrayal and murder.
