PUBLISHED : 10 Feb 2024 at 04:00
A 37-year-old Myanmar man has been arrested in Hat Yai for brutally beating three Rohingya — two women and a 14-year-old boy — in a bid to get a 500,000 kyat (8,500 baht) ransom from them while smuggling them into Malaysia.
Officers from Hat Yai Police Station and Songkhla Immigration captured the Myanmar suspect yesterday in front of a house in Songkhla’s Hat Yai district after it was found that he used violence against the three Rohingya refugees.
A video clip of a Rohingya woman being beaten with a wooden stick while she was crying was found on the mobile phone of the arrested man.
The investigation found that the Myanmar man had smuggled 10 Rohingya people to Malaysia for 10 million kyat.
He filmed the beatings of the Rohingya and sent them to their relatives in the destination country to get a 500,000 kyat ransom from them.
Those who paid the money would get to continue their journey to Malaysia.
The Myanmar man told the police that he smuggled the three Rohingya through a forest in Songkhla to the house in Hat Yai, where they were kept captive while waiting for another smuggler to help them get to Malaysia.
People in the area were first informed about the incident by the 14-year-old Rohingya boy who escaped the scene.
The boy had also allegedly been beaten.
The boy revealed that he had been staying at a United Nations refugee camp in Bangladesh for Rohingya who had fled Myanmar. He said he was later smuggled out of Bangladesh by a human trafficking gang to be sent to a third country.