Source: Reuters
Date: August 9, 2013
Thai authorities have captured the suspected leader of a human trafficking gang, who confessed to selling some migrants from Myanmar into slavery on Thai fishing boats and possibly murdering as many as seven, a Thai official said on Friday.
Ko Myo, a 42-year-old Myanmar national, was shot and captured at a rubber plantation in southern Surat Thani during a raid by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and local police.
The raid follows mounting international concern over the trafficking of Myanmar migrants in Thailand's lucrative fishing industry, one of several sources of human slavery in the country that could trigger U.S. sanctions.
It also follows a Reuters investigation published on July 17 that found human smugglers selling some Rohingya Muslims into slavery on Thai fishing boats.
Thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in recent months after violence with Buddhists, who follow the country's majority religion.
Ko Myo will face human trafficking charges first, said Komvich Padhanarath, a senior official in the human trafficking division of the DSI, which is part of the Justice Ministry. "The murder charge is under further investigation, and it will be a time-consuming process to verify the bodies."
Ko Myo was named in a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, a London-based non-government body funded by environmental advocacy groups, which called him a trafficker and implicated him in murder and rape.
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