National police chief Somyot Pumpunmuang said today (May 4) the arrested suspect was a municipal councillor of tambon Padang Besar in Songkhla's Sadao district.
The suspect is one of three people facing arrest warrants. Police were seeking warrants for the arrest of three more suspects, including government officials, Pol Gen Somyot said.
"The prime minister (Prayut Chan-o-cha) just phoned me again and ordered me to be there to follow up the case. All people involved will be arrested and no one will be spared. This issue is causing a great problem to the nation," the national police chief said before his flight to Songkhla this morning.
Senior national-level officials were heading for the South after the discovery of many detention camps, graves and bodies of Rohingya migrants on Khao Kaew mountain in tambon Padang Besar of Sadao district near the Thai-Malaysian border on Friday (May 1).
Human trafficking is an illegal transnational business and the detention camps were near a border patrol police base, Pol Gen Somyot said. He would coordinate legal action and investigations into the case with Malaysia and Myanmar.
The detention camps showed that a large number of Rohingya people had been transported at one time and the business had continued for years, he said.
Forensic examinations of the bodies of 26 Rohingya people unearthed in Padang Besar would determine if they died of illnesses or physical assault.
Army chief and Deputy Defence Minister Udomdej Sitabutr was also visiting Songkhla and Ranong provinces to investigate the human trafficking case.
He said he would go to Ranong because Rohingya migrants usually entered Thailand through there. He gave an assurance that any government officials found to be involved would face harsh action.
It was reported that migrants from Rakhine state of Myanmar and Bangladesh were used as forced labour at such detention camps and kept until ransoms were paid by their relatives, both on their homeland and in Malaysia. Some of the migrants were actually kidnapped from their homeland.
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