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Burma Times Correspondent: May 03, 2015

The bodies of 26 Rohingya Muslims have been exhumed as authorities ended their search at the mass grave site, according to reports by Thai media.

“In total we have 26 bodies. As far as I know one is a woman. We still cannot tell the cause of their deaths,” said pol Gen Jarumporn Suramanee, the head of the forensic team at the site.

The refugees were deprived of food and tortured, according to Thai authorities.

Refugees in Thailand are held in the jungle camps of Southern Thailand till their families can afford to pay the ransom money.

The Thai government vowed to punish those responsible for the deaths. Human rights groups and some media outlets however produced recent evidence that high ranking officials in the Thai government, armed forces and law enforcing authorities are in cohorts with human traffickers.

Doctors treating the two sole survivors — men aged 25 and 35 years — told AFP their patients were suffering from a range of ailments.

“Both are malnourished, have scabies and lice,” Dr Kwanwilai Chotpitchayanku told AFP at Padang Besar hospital.

“The older man could not walk, he had to be carried off the mountain. He hadn’t eaten anything for two days before he was found. He told the translator he had a fever in the jungle for two months.”

Police suspect that there is at least one similar camp in the area.

Rohingya refugees in Thailand and Malaysia have however told Burma Times that the whole area is full of similar camps where hundreds of Rohingyas are tortured and starved by their captors till their families manage the required money.

According to Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, “The finding of a mass grave at a trafficking camp sadly comes as little surprise.”

Many fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many mass graves waiting to be found.