These discoveries of mass graves are not a first, as authorities in May said they found 139 suspected graves in abandoned jungle camps in the area.
Advertisement
Police uncovered 24 bodies on Saturday in the Bukit Wang Burma area near the Malaysian border with Thailand, close to where authorities in May had found hundreds of bodies in illegal detention camps.
Thehe bodies retrieved from the new graves are understood to have been sent to Hospital Sultanah Bahiyah (HSB) for postmortem. Rights groups say some have been beaten to death, and The Associated Press has documented other cases in which people have been enslaved on fishing boats.
He said the remains were discovered by patrolling troops after rains during the past few days washed away the soil.
According to The Star newspaper, the deceased are believed to have been Rohingya and Bangladeshis, and suspected to have died of malnourishment or abuse.
“We don’t know how long the victims were buried or if there was a transit camp there”, he said.
The discoveries in northern Malaysia followed similar revelations earlier in May in Thailand, where police unearthed 36 bodies from shallow graves in seven abandoned camps on the Thai side of the border.
The latest police crackdown drove traffickers to abandon thousands of migrants floating in overcrowded boats, resulting in a regional humanitarian crisis.
Advertisement
The bodies most likely belong to refugees from Myanmar, members of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority, Police Chief Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar told the Malaysian Insider.
