Précis

On the trail of the traffickers exploiting the most unwanted people on the planet.

They promise a safe passage away from persecution and a new life in a safe haven. Instead they beat, rape, starve and often kill those who put their trust in them. They're the people smugglers trading in human misery.

Through eye-witness accounts as well as video and audio recordings Four Corners investigates the network that has trafficked tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar into Thailand: a wild and heart-wrenching journey with a shocking outcome.

"This is a network that's been in place for years." Human rights investigator

We take the smugglers' route, discovering their methods and their alliances.

"None of these camps could have operated without the full awareness of the Thai authorities and also the Malaysian authorities." Human rights investigator

The traffickers show no mercy and make no distinction between men, women and children.

"If the children cry, they beat us. If we talk to each other, they beat us. If we complain about the food not being enough, they also beat us. They beat us not with their hands but wire." Refugee

The scale is extraordinary, the cruelty extreme.

So what is driving these refugees to put their lives in the hands of the smugglers?

Reporter Mark Davis travelled undercover into Myanmar to find out. It's a story the government there does not want told. More than 100,000 Rohingya are held in camps in Myanmar, some in a ghetto where no-one is allowed in or out unless under armed guard. In some camps, starvation is taking hold. It's a human rights disaster that has been hidden from view.

Night. Phuket Tourist GVs

Music

00:14

MARK DAVIS, REPORTER: Phuket, Thailand: a familiar place to many Australians. For tourists, it is known as a piece of paradise. But for others passing through here, it’s nothing more than a pit-stop on the road to hell --

00:20

River. GFX o/lay map Thailand/Myanmar

a halfway point from their torment in Myanmar to their hoped-for refuge in Malaysia.

00:40

Music

00:48

Thai police patrol river

MARK DAVIS: North of the Phuket resorts, extensive mangrove swamps hide hundreds of small islands.

00650

Davis on boat

00:58

We are making our way through these twisting bends in search of a secret that has been covered up here for years.

ALAN MORISON, JOURNALIST: We are heading to one of the camps that has been recently discovered. It's a camp where

01:02

Morison on boat

several people died and where the body of a pregnant woman was exhumed, not long back.

01:17

Morison and Chutima on boat

For six years, Australian journalist Alan Morison and colleague Chutima Sidasathian, through their website Phuketwan, have been reporting that a very dark trade was being conducted in these swamps.

01:22

Anwar on boat

Today Anwar, a refugee who has recently been rescued from this swamp, is guiding us into the maze where he was imprisoned.

ALAN MORISON: We've got one of the survivors with us

01:38

Morison

and he'll, he'll show us the spot where, where she and perhaps other, other people were buried.

01:49

Party disembarking from boat, walking uphill through jungle

01:56

Chutima shows remains of camp

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN, JOURNALIST: Here is the place that they're staying, waiting for transfer to the south and the border side. You can see shoes, water, have some clothes there.

MARK DAVIS: How many people here, do you think?

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: About 300 people here before.

MARK DAVIS: Three hundred? In this, in this...?

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: In this area, yeah.

02:12

MARK DAVIS: This traffickers' camp was a temporary land drop after an exhausting ocean voyage. It was here that refugees would be hidden until further transport could be arranged.

02:39

Anwar at camp

It is a chilling memory for Anwar: a place of constant beatings and silence for weeks on end.

02:52

Anwar

ANWAR, ASYLUM SEEKER: After we arrived they put us in groups, with two agents guarding. If someone move or stands, they are beaten. Some were so hungry they asked for food and water. But for talking they got a beating.

03:00

Chutima finds an empty packet of food mix

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: You see this? Myanmar Mix. See?

MARK DAVIS: Coloured bands would be attached to the

03:23

wrists of victims here to indicate which trafficker owned them and to which horror jungle camp they would be driven to on the Malaysian border.

03:29

Police show grave

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: That's the grave of the women. We don't know how she died but we believe that she has a long journey, a long, big journey in the boat. The boat is quite, very crowded, you know, on one boat.

03:40

Footage of party digging large mound. A woman's skeleton is revealed, as are the bones of a man

The body of a heavily pregnant women was discovered buried here, as Chutima filmed a few weeks back.

03:57

MARK DAVIS: Exhausted from a sea journey, perhaps sick, perhaps such a burden, that she was murdered - as her caved-in skull suggests.

04:11

Davis to Chutima at grave

MARK DAVIS: Do we know her name?

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: No, we don't know, we don't know.

POLICE OFFICER: Rohingya.

04:26

Police officer

MARK DAVIS: Rohingya? Rohingya lady.

04:30

Police at grave

MARK DAVIS: The remains of a man were also found here, tightly tied to a tree below the tidal waterline.

04:35

Grave

The graves found here were the first thread of a scandal that has revealed itself this month and shocked the world.

04:44

Morison and Anwar

ALAN MORISON: This is a hell of a place to spend three or four days.

04:52

Morison

To spend a fortnight here: God, pretty awful.

04:57

Morison by grave with Anwar

MARK DAVIS: Two years ago Alan Morison and Chutima dared to suggest that Thai authorities were involved in the trafficking business.

05:02

Party continues walking

Next month they face trial on criminal defamation charges for that suggestion, with a possible jail term.

05:10

Party returns to boat

But now, the sheer scale of the trafficking network is coming to light,

05:18

Davis walks with Smith

courtesy of the detailed investigative reports by human rights researcher Matt Smith of Fortify Rights.

(To Matt Smith) How can you run something of this scale without the knowledge of, certainly, all the villages and, presumably, some of the authorities?

05:25

Smith interview

MATT SMITH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FORTIFY RIGHTS: None of these camps could have operated without the full awareness of the Thai authorities, and also the Malaysian authorities. Villagers know what's happening. The Thai authorities have

05:38

handed over thousands of people who were in their custody to the human trafficking networks. We know this has happened. We've documented it.

05:49

MARK DAVIS: What level of authority are we talking?

05:59

MATT SMITH: Well, a senior army commander was just arrested in Thailand. Most of our documentation points to a number of different state security agencies in Thailand that were profiting from this. We know there are upwards of 50 police who are being investigated by the current Thai junta. Is that enough? Definitely not. I mean, this is a network that's been in place for years.

06:01

Photos on laptop/Davis and Smith look at photos

“Here's a boat that's under construction.”

MARK DAVIS: A network purpose-built to traffic Rohingya refugees. But what are the Rohingya running from? That story is still largely untold.

06:26

Photos of Rohingya GFX o/lay Map. Thailand/Myanmar

MARK DAVIS: It's a story that takes us north to Burma - or, as it is now known, Myanmar: a nation just now staggering out of decades of brutal military dictatorship.

06:41

Yangon GV

Music

06:54

Davis in car

MARK DAVIS: We are heading out of the capital, Yangon,

06:58

Davis to camera

trying to make our way up to the north-west. It's a no-go zone. It's where the Rohingya live and, of course, where the Rohingya are now trying to escape. There's a lot of security there: they don't want outsiders in those camps at all - and especially, of course, journalists. So we'll see how far we get.

07:01

View from car into airport

In the capital Yangon, at least, there is a new mood of political freedom as the nation moves towards elections this year.

07:22

Inside domestic terminal

But this will be the last place I can film openly as I move towards the Rohingya areas in the north-west. There, the old rules apply.

07:34

View from plane. GFX o/lay Map Rakhine

The Rakhine state has been the traditional stronghold of the Muslim Rohingya in a solidly Buddhist nation.

07:45

Aerials from plane

After three years of ethnic turmoil, the Rohingya are now confined to these coastal swamplands. And from these shorelines leaky boats, pirates and possible death seem like better options than the land they are living in.

07:54

Sittwe street

08:09

Guys playing chin lone (sepak takraw)

Sittwe is the capital of the Rakhine state. Half a million people live in and around here.

08:15

Davis films

I get a rare opportunity to be seen using a camera, by arriving during the celebrations leading to Rakhine National Day.

08:25

Rakhine National Day drummers, pageant

But there's a sinister side to this beautiful display. Rakhine National Day has only been going for a few years. It's solidly Buddhist and ethnically based. And this display of ethnic pride only started after the Rohingya were violently expelled from the city: a clear sign of the Buddhist contempt for the Muslim Rohingya.

(To Buddhist monk) They should stay away?

BUDDHIST MONK: Stay far away.

08:39

Buddhist Monk

MARK DAVIS: Where should they, where should they go?

09:08

BUDDHIST MONK: Far away. It's better if they stay far away from Rakhine.

File footage of rioting. Houses and buildings are on fire

MARK DAVIS: In 2012, a joint force of Buddhist monks and Rakhine nationalists attacked the Rohingya in Sittwe. Hundreds of Rohingya were killed, their homes and businesses destroyed and virtually all of them - a third of the population - were expelled from Sittwe.

09:21

Photographs of Narzi houses and buildings on fire

MARK DAVIS: This was the suburb of Narzi, the biggest Rohingya sector in the city. A housing district and a major commercial hub.

09:41

View from vehicle of empty fields, overgrown with vegetation

MARK DAVIS: And this is all that remains of it today.

It's hard to image now, but this was a suburb like any other in this city –

09:53

Davis in vehicle to camera

two-storey buildings, houses, businesses. All burnt down by the locals and then ultimately bulldozed by the local government. The place has been totally obliterated and the people that lived here are now down on the mudflats by the coast, behind wire.

10:04

Pole climbing

As the city celebrates three years of ethnic purity, it's still a touchy topic to discuss its former inhabitants who now live behind wire outside the city boundaries.

10:23

Man in park

MAN IN PARK: Only people born in Rakhine belong here. We don't want Rohingya to rule over us.

SECOND MAN (off-screen): Don't talk about these things to a foreigner.

10:40

Pole climbing

10:51

Driving to Rohingya camp

10:59

MARK DAVIS: The roads to the Rohingya camps all have police checkpoints on them now. Special permits are required, which are rarely granted to journalists.

11:07

Davis hunched down in back seat of car

MARK DAVIS: We've had to go a bit off-road to get around the checkpoints that are encircling these camps. We're now inside. There's about 10 kilometres of Rohingya settlements spread along this coast. There's still police in here, so I need to keep my hat on as some sort of attempt at a disguise, and my head down until we can get inside some of these villages.

11:18

Driving through camp

More than 100,000 Rohingya have been locked in camps like this for three years. The bulk of the people in this camp were city people. They had businesses and jobs in town, where they had lived for generations. Now they are permanently locked in and survive almost entirely on UN rations.

(To driver) If there's police, tell me.

11:46

Inside camp

Lookouts keep me advised of police patrols as I meet with Aung Win, previously a wealthy Rohingyan businessman..

12:09

Davis walks with Aung Win

(To Aung Win) So most people come from Sittwe?

AUNG WIN, ROHINGYAN MAN: Sittwe, downtown Sittwe.

MARK DAVIS: Right. So they had businesses and they had jobs…

AUNG WIN: Businesses, yeah, jobs and so many things. Now everything is empty.

12:17

Davis with Aung Win

They killed old men and killed old women. So on that day the Rakhine people killed one of my brother-in-law, (inaudible). And another one was - cut his throat in front of my father-in-law.

12:29

They burned down and they looted our property. Now we cannot go back to Sittwe downtown any more. There is many security and many checkpoints around the camp.

MARK DAVIS: So you can't go out?

AUNG WIN: Yeah. If we secretly go, they will pick up us and they will send us to the jail for one month.

12:44

MARK DAVIS: To escape these camps, members of Aung Win's family have boarded the traffickers' boats that hover offshore, as have tens of thousands of others, he claims. The Myanmar government disputes that people are fleeing for their lives - and the reported scale of the exodus.

13:08

AUNG WIN: So I can give a long list of the people: so who die on the boat, who reach to Thailand border, who die in the trafficker hands. I can give the list of the people.

MARK DAVIS: Yes.

AUNG WIN: So Myanmar government is shitting and lying.

13:26

MARK DAVIS: Shitting: bullshitting, you say?

AUNG WIN: Bullshitting!

MARK DAVIS: Bullshitting. (Laughs)

AUNG WIN: Yeah. Bullshitting (laughs).

13:46

Walking through camp

MARK DAVIS: Most of the Rohingya here can trace three or four generations in Sittwe; others, many, many more.

MARK DAVIS: Were you, were you born here? In Sittwe?

13:53

Davis with group of Rohingya men in camp

ROHINGYA MAN: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: And your father?

ROHINGYA MAN: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: In Sittwe, or from Myanmar? And your grandfather?

ROHINGYA MAN Also my grandfather. All the generations are from here.

MARK DAVIS: The Rohingya have been in Sittwe for centuries,

14:04

but it's not enough to have earned them citizenship.

(To Zakari) None of these people

14:25

Zakari

are citizens?

ZAKARI, YOUNG ROHINGYA MAN: Yeah, they're not citizen. But government mention them: you are Rohingyan, migrated from Bangladesh.

MARK DAVIS: Right.

ZAKARI: But that is not true. These people are not Bengali. They are Rohingya.

14:30

Zakari walks with Davis through camp

ZAKARI: Our government don't want to provide them because they have fought back with the Rakhine community during the conflict of 2012.

MARK DAVIS: They fought back?

ZAKARI: Yeah, they fought back.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): The status of the Rohingya has always been marginal - but never quite as hopeless as this.

14:47

Rohingya in camp

The people in this camp are on the verge of starvation. When the mob came to destroy their village in 2012, they armed themselves with sticks and machetes and fought back.

15:05

Zakari and Davis visit shack. Zakari points to wooden bench, the size of a single bed

ZAKARI: Six family member living in there.

MARK DAVIS: On this?

ZAKARI: On this.

MOTHER: My little children and I pass the days in hunger.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): For fighting back, the Myanmar government declared the whole village combatants,

15:18

Davis walks with men and children

not displaced people - not entitled, therefore, to receive UN aid or rations.

15:35

Walking with Zakari

(To Zakari) A hundred and fifty houses?

ZAKARI: Yeah.

MARK DAVIS: Seven hundred people. And no food?

ZAKARI (to villager, translation): No ration, no rice?

VILLAGER: We get nothing.

15:43

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): They've lost their homes. Their farmland has gone. And they can't leave here to get work.

15:51

In shack

ZAKARI (pointing to mattresses): Five family members are living on this.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Now forced to beg off other refugees: the poorest of the poor.

15:57

Old Woman begs for food

OLD ROHINGYA WOMAN: It has been almost five days and I have not eaten anything. My head spins from starvation and weakness. I didn't get any food. I'm so weak. (Cries)

ZAKARI: We have no energy here.

YOUNG ROHINGYA MAN: Brother, we are happy this man is from Australia. We can survive for some more days if we get just $500.

OLD ROHINGYA WOMAN: There is no food to eat.

16:06

Zakari and Davis in car

ZAKARI: We have to stay here like a prisoner. No movements and no freedom here.

16:53

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): My guide in the camps, Zakari, was just finishing school when the mob burnt down his home in Sittwe. He quite suddenly loses his composure

17:02

Zakari

when he tells me he would have graduated from university this year.

ZAKARI (cries): So how long shall we need to stay in the camp, in this situation there? How long?

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): For those younger than Zakari, there is not even a high school to attend any more. No state funds for schools - but plenty for police.

17:12

Camera ducks as car approaches police vehicle

MARK DAVIS (to driver): Stay, stay, stay, stay. Stop, stop.

17:38

(To Siraj) What happens if the cop see us?

SIRAJ, YOUNG ROHINGYA MAN: If we see the cops,

17:40

Siraj in car

we are afraid of them.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): It's not hard to see why

17:46

Police truck ahead

people might risk their lives getting out of here. And there's no shortage of traffickers to meet that demand.

17:50

Siraj among boats

I meet Siraj, whose cousin recently escaped from here on one of the smugglers' boats. And he explains to me how the trade works - almost all of it essentially on credit.

17:59

Davis with Siraj

(To Siraj) Now, the people around here: they don't have this money. How do they get the money?

SIRAJ: First, for the Malays: first, the Rohingya people want to go leave for Malaysia, they have to pay the smugglers $200.

MARK DAVIS: Yeah.

SIRAJ: And then the smugglers take them to the ship.

18:12

MARK DAVIS: So to begin with, though, you only need $200?

SIRAJ: Yeah.

MARK DAVIS: Two hundred. It's like a deposit, is it?

SIRAJ: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: You give $200?

SIRAJ: Two hundred dollars.

MARK DAVIS: And you pay the rest when you get to Malaysia?

SIRAJ: Malaysia. And the other relatives who are in foreign country: they will pay.

18:32

Boat

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): A down-payment gets a Rohingya onto a boat like this, which heads offshore to meet the smugglers' mothership.

18:48

(Footage from mobile phone of boat journey

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): One of the families here gave me this cell phone footage of the journey out from the camps to meet the main vessel. The mothership will cruise up and down the coast for weeks, until its holds are full with 400 or 500 refugees and ready to depart. Then the journey is on to the jungle camps of Thailand, where the true nature of the deal becomes apparent: they are hostages to be ransomed.

19:00

Davis with Siraj

MARK DAVIS: And they're getting on the phone and they're calling their families?

SIRAJ: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: Saying, "Please pay, please pay"?

SIRAJ: "Please pay for me."

MARK DAVIS: OK.

SIRAJ: "If not, the smugglers will kill me." And their relatives pity him and they pay for him.

MARK DAVIS: OK. And they do kill people, obviously?

SIRAJ: Yeah, yes.

MARK DAVIS: They kill them?

19:30

Davis with Arafa

ARAFA, ROHINGYA WIDOW (translation): I have suffered hardships. I've suffered so much.

19:49

Oh brother, I nearly died.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Arafa, a widow, has just escaped from one of the offshore vessels with her four young children. She was at sea for seven weeks and is still deeply

19:53

traumatised by her ordeal at the hands of the traffickers.

ARAFA: If the children cry, they beat us. If we talk to each other, they beat us. If we complain about the food not being enough, they beat us.

20:07

Arafa’s daughters

MARK DAVIS (to Ummu): So were you afraid of the smugglers?

UMMU, ARAFA'S DAUGHTER: I was really afraid of the smugglers. They are Thai. If we do anything wrong, they beat us.

20:24

MARK DAVIS: So they were beating people. Were they beating the women? Beating the men?

20:35

UMMU: They made the men take off their shirts, then beat them with a belt. The women got beaten with electrical wiring.

20:39

If the smugglers are woken by crying children, they beat them. By a thick wire. If the parents objected, they beat them too.

20:48

Arafa’s children

MARK DAVIS: After 50 days, the smugglers couldn't find a path around the Thai navy blockade. Her children were starving and two of them were very sick. She begged to be put on a passing Rohingya fishing boat. But there was a price for that too: severe beatings and demands for more money.

21:01

Arafa

ARAFA: How could I pay?

UMMU: They asked for more money or they will throw us into the sea.

21:21

Davis films Arafa

ARAFA: They stole the clothes I took with me. They took them from me and beat me. I didn't have clothes when I arrived, so I asked from people here. Now we are able to wear clothes.

21:30

Janu Bibi carries water

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Janu Bibi's husband escaped from the Sittwe camp, hoping to provide for her and their son. He hadn't had a day's work since the 2012 pogrom.

21:45

Davis with Janu Bibi

Her husband was two months at sea. He made it to a forest camp in Thailand from where Janu received a phone call, demanding payment from the traffickers.

JANU BIBI: I got money by borrowing from people. I cried and I begged. I got some from my in-laws. I borrowed some of the money from them and the rest from here. What else can you do?

21:57

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Thirteen hundred dollars was paid to the smugglers' agent, who lives in Janu's village.

22:24

It was $700 dollars short - and her husband died before she could raise any more.

JANU BIBI: I heard he was brought to the house where the people are freed. But after two days, I was told he had passed away.

22:30

MARK DAVIS: Do you know where your husband's body is?

22:46

JANU BIBI: He died at that holding house.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): I've seen where the refugees are held in Thailand, they're in jungle camps with bamboo cages. But I don't have the heart to tell her.

22:49

Davis looks in to abandoned mosque in Sittwe

Music

23:03

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): In the heart of Sittwe town sits the grand mosque: ransacked, abandoned and its ancient library destroyed.

23:09

This majestic ruin, the site of a mosque for three centuries, almost mocks the passing citizens on the main road. A silent testament to the ancient Rohingyan presence in this city.

23:21

And I'm shocked to discover that some of the people who once worshipped here still live about 500 metres away, trapped inside a city enclave.

MARK DAVIS: This is one of the more sinister parts of

23:37

Davis to camera from back of vehicle

Sittwe and, frankly, it's a bit dangerous to be around here. Immediately around the corner behind me is a checkpoint: a barbed wire fence, general fencing. It's the last Rohingya enclave in Sittwe. We're just off the business district here and there's about 4,000 Rohingya living in a suburb just behind me. They can't get out. Twice a week a police truck comes and escorts some of them down to the market to buy their food, under guard. But otherwise they are completely trapped inside this ghetto. It is Sittwe's darkest secret.

23:56

Barbed wire on border of enclave. Shots of Aung Mingalar

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Walls, barbed wire and multiple layers of road blocks surround the small enclave known as Aung Mingalar, which somehow survived the onslaught 2012 . No-one is allowed out. The military now occupy what was the school and peer in on the ghetto.

MATT SMITH: The big secret is that there's a Rohingya population

24:41

Smith

still living in Sittwe, and I think there's a lot that the authorities don't want the international community to know about in Rakhine state.

I think certainly, in the event that there is a significant act of violence against the population of Aung Mingalar: less details about this place, the better from the perspective of the authorities, unfortunately.

25:04

Young Barber cutting man’s hair

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): And unfortunately it appears that the bloodlust in this town still hasn't abated towards the Muslim Rohingya.

25:25

Older barber

BARBER: Kill them all, especially the Rohingya.

TRANSLATOR (off-screen): He wants to kill the Rohingya, or "so-called" Rohingya.

BARBER: There will be no Rohingya in Rakhine.

MARK DAVIS: But why? Why?

25:34

Young barber cuts man’s hair

BARBER: What would I do with the Rohingya? Give me power for six months and I will deal with them.

25:44

Older barber

I will use the army, navy, and air. I will kill them all.

25:53

Men sit by harbour

MAN 1: Keep them separate in the camp and from there they will just leave by themselves.

25:59

MAN 2: They are not from here. They are from Bangladesh.

26:07

MAN 3: They are Bengali. Even if living here a long time, still Bengali.

26:13

MARK DAVIS: Would you let them come out of the camps to work?

26:20

MEN: No!

MARK DAVIS: No?

MAN 4: No.

26:22

Yangon

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): All levels of government in Myanmar -- state and national -- are blatantly hostile to the Rohingya.

26:26

Aung San Suu Kyi addresses crowd

And there's little sign that Aung San Suu Kyi, the great democratic hope for Myanmar in this year's elections, will be much different.

MICHAEL SAINSBURY, JOURNALIST: The side of politics that the rest of the world has supported - Aung San Suu Kyi and the

26:34

Sainsbury

National League for Democracy - have been very silent on the matter.

26:49

Davis and Sainsbury

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Veteran Asia correspondent Michael Sainsbury is in Yangon, following the two main stories here:

26:53

Sainsbury

the rise of Suu Kyi and the demise of the Rohingyans.

MICHAEL SAINSBURY: It's been an issue that she's had a lot of criticism for in the past few weeks. And they find it very difficult even to say the word "Rohingya." They don't describe them as Rohingyas, they describe them as , "Bengali Muslims", because they don't see them as legitimate. No-one in this country sees these people as being a legitimate part of Myanmar.

27:01

Men on boats/Boat on water

Music

27:30

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): With such little hope of change inside Myanmar, the sea seems like the only door open to the Rohingya.

27:33

GFX o/lay map. Sittwe to Malaysia

After leaving from the west coast of Myanmar, they're generally dumped somewhere in the mangroves of southern Thailand. There they are sorted into groups and sent overland towards what they hope will be an Islamic refuge in Malaysia.

27:44

Highway roadblock search

We pick up their trail on the main highway south. Roadblocks, searching for human cargo, are a recent feature on the roads of southern Thailand. The depth of police and army involvement in the trade is becoming clearer and several senior commanders have already been arrested. Until a few weeks ago road blocks were rare and even now their locations are well known and avoidable, as the Rohingya are shuttled ever southwards.

28:04

Davis to camera in jungle by Ute

MARK DAVIS: The mangrove swamp camps are generally fairly temporary. The Rohingya are then brought out of there and packed in vehicles just like this: a very common utility in Thailand. They get seven people on the bottom here, a thin cover; another seven people. Covered on top. And then they're taken down to the true horror camps, which are down on the Malaysian border. A very thick forest area. And that's where we're heading now.

28:42

Driving up mountain. Davis films Kalam

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): I'm travelling up into the mountain range that straddles Thailand and Malaysia with Rohingyan Abdul Kalam.

29:06

(To Abdul Kalam) How many camps?

ABDUL KALAM, JOURNALIST: So more than 50 camps. More, more, more than 50 camps.

MARK DAVIS: Fifty camps on this mountain?

ABDUL KALAM: Yes. Just this mountain. So all around have all together, on the Malaysia side, also Thai sides together. Not one side.

29:15

Kalam directs car on to dirt road

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Kalam has spent eight years secretly filming and documenting the camps that have been running in these mountains.

29:33

Davis and Kalam with Thai army patrol in the forest

We meet with a Thai army patrol in the forest and they guide us up to the border. It's familiar terrain to Kalam.

29:42

From this stick marking the border with Malaysia, Kalam knows of four abandoned camps, only two of which have been discovered.

29:56

Abdul Kalam shows Davis footage from his small camera

MARK DAVIS: And when was this? When did you film this?

ABDUL KALAM: This is only three week.

MARK DAVIS: You went in with the army, did you? Or...

ABDUL KALAM: No, no, no, because I go alone.

MARK DAVIS: You went alone?

30:05

ABDUL KALAM: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: And so you found this camp?

30:16

ABDUL KALAM: Yes. This is the second camp...

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): The camps revealed so far by the Thai and Malaysian authorities are just a scratch on the surface of these killing fields.

30:19

(To Abdul Kalam) They're buried, all the bodies?

ABDUL KALAM: Yeah.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): And the number

30:29

of shallow graves below that surface will be many hundreds, according to Kalam: refuges starved or executed by traffickers.

30:31

(To Abdul Kalam) Like, we've seen on the news: we've seen two...

ABDUL KALAM: No, more, more, more, more, more, more. More graves.

MARK DAVIS: We've seen two big graves. There's going to be more? There's this one and more?

ABDUL KALAM: More. More!

30:41

Davis films Kalam

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): This has been nothing short of a wholesale operation that must have been known to all in this region.

(To Abdul Kalam) Hundreds and hundreds of people?

ABDUL KALAM: Thousand, thousand people, not hundred, hundred people. One camp was 1,000 people. All the people know. I think so. All people know this is a long time already, this problem.

MARK DAVIS: And there's trucks coming in and pick-ups and things? Bringing..

30:49

Kalam

ABDUL KALAM: Pick up: about, he come to have 100 people, or come with 500 or 600 people at one time, one day.

MARK DAVIS: Up the road?

ABDUL KALAM: Yes.

MARK DAVIS: In one day?

ABDUL KALAM: And the road, by road.

31:13

Kalam and Davis

MARK DAVIS: Five hundred people in one day?

ABDUL KALAM: More than.

MARK DAVIS: And then walking: 500 people walking up?

ABDUL KALAM: Walking up, up here.

31:21

Jungle.

MARK DAVIS: This is huge. It's huge.

31:29

Kalam and Davis walking through forest

ABDUL KALAM: Maybe more than 200 people here living...

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Further into the forest, we come across an abandoned camp which has recently been discovered.

(To Abdul Kalam) So this is in the middle of the jungle?

ABDUL KALAM: In the middle of jungle. Big jungle.

31:33

Kalam

Big trees.

MARK DAVIS: And you can't see from the air?

ABDUL KALAM: Yeah, so cannot, helicopter up there cannot see inside down there.

MARK DAVIS: How many people would be in here?

ABDUL KALAM: Oh, much, much. About more than 200, 300 like this, people.

MARK DAVIS: OK.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): With us is a former camp worker, who can't be identified,

31:47

Abandoned camp

returning for the first time since he fled here last year.

32:07

Buraq

BURAQ, CAMP GUARD: I feel like I have been taken out of a dark grave. That's how I feel.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq,

32:12

Camp

17, himself a former Rohingyan refugee, recounts the horrors of this camp and another nearby where he worked, earning his freedom by digging graves.

BURAQ: When I see the camp it feels like the whole world is breaking up and falling in on me.

32:19

Davis, Kalam, Buraq

With my own hands I buried 20 bodies.

32:39

Buraq

Firstly, I had to cook and serve them food. Then when someone died, I had to carry them to the grave and bury them. Then we had to carry firewood. That's all.

32:45

Davis, Kalam, Buraq

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq tells of Rohingya being held in pits, starved and tortured as relatives made bank deposits to stave off their execution.

32:57

Buraq

BURAQ: Even an animal would not do the things that they did. They were ruthless.

33:07

MARK DAVIS: They were beating the men and the women? Who were they beating?

33:15

Buraq

BURAQ: They would beat the men, they would rape the women, if they failed to get the money.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Some were kept here and tortured for two years, while families sent small amounts to keep them alive. If the payments stopped, they were killed.

33:20

Davis, Kalam, Buraq

BURAQ: Hanging. They kill them by hanging.

33:35

Buraq

We had to carry those bodies to the grave and bury them. We could not talk about that to anyone. If we did we were beaten.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Women faced extra horrors here.

33:37

Buraq

BURAQ: My sisters, though they were not my real sisters, we were from the same area. The smugglers would humiliate and rape them in the camp. The Thais and Rohingyans, both bosses and workers, would rape our women.

33:50

Davis, Kalam, Buraq

I saw six women die. Three of them were raped. They survived two days following the rape, then they died. Three others couldn't pay the money, that's why they were killed.

34:07

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Even children were not spared the depravities of the traffickers.

34:24

Buraq

BURAQ: There were two little children who came here with their mother. They would always scream and cry for food. Scream and cry for their mother. You know what they did to those boys? They chopped their hands off and sent them off to beg. I never saw them again.

MARK DAVIS: Why did they cut the hand off a child?

34:30

BURAQ: To have them beg in the street, so they could pay back what their parents owed. While begging these children would have to pretend, to get sympathy, as if their parents had died and they needed money for the funeral and to bury their bodies.

38:58

MARK DAVIS: How old was the child?

BURAQ: One of the children was eight and the other one was almost 10.

35:16

Davis, Kalam, Buraq

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): It is doubly sickening to know that Thai government officials were happy to profit on this trade.

35:24

Forest camp

Fortify Rights recorded one of the phone calls from this forest from a Rohingya boy from Sittwe to his uncle.

35:31

ROHINGYA BOY (phone call, translation): My skin is peeled off from beatings. They are beating me. My legs and hands are twisted.

35:43

Thai policeman in forest

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): The family knew that the boy had been arrested by Thai police when he first landed in Thailand. When the uncle asks why the boy was calling from a traffickers' camp, he receives news of a chilling transaction.

35:51

TRAFFICKER (phone call, translation): The boss is Thai. We are just working for the Thais.

UNCLE (translation): Our people did not go with these Thais. They were captured by Thai immigration. How did he reach a Thai boss from the hands of Thai immigration?

TRAFFICKER (phone call, translation): The Thai boss purchased them from Thai immigration.

36:06

Buraq, Kalam and Mark walking through jungle

BURAQ (translation): I can show you the graveyard. I can precisely point to the graves that I dug. I can point to the exact grave of the girl who was raped. I can give evidence how people were hanged.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq leads us away from the camp, far away.

36:28

Driving towards Padang Besar

He leads us off the mountain and down towards the main town.

36:48

Padang Besar GVs

Padang Besar is the official crossing point between Thailand and Malaysia. It was the heart of the traffickers' operations. The town mayor and his deputy have recently been arrested for their involvement in the trade.

36:55

Driving towards Padang Besar

Whenever there was a load of two or three corpses, Buraq would be driven through these streets at midnight towards a little-used cemetery.

37:11

Chutima, Kalam and Buraq in car

ABDUL KALAM (pointing): Here police station. Near.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Right next to it? The grave, the grave is right next to the police station?

ABDUL KALAM: Yes. You see the police station is there.

37:20

Buraq in car

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq is nervous driving down this road. The smuggler he worked for still lives here, still free and perversely overlooking the graves of the Rohingya who died or were murdered in his camp.

37:30

Kalam to Buraq

ABDUL KALAM (to Buraq): As soon as we get to the grave, just show him and leave quickly.

37:44

At graves. Buraq walks

BURAQ: It is heartbreaking to come here. People died of starvation and we buried them here. If my boss sees me here, he will kill me. These are the graves here. Dead.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Here?

BURAQ: Here.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Show me. How many? One, two, three?

BURAQ: One, two,

37:50

Buraq shows graves

three, four, five, six, nine, 10.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Here?

BURAQ: Here.

38:32

Buraq takes Davis to another part of the cemetery, points to a grave

BURAQ (crying): Rohingya. All Rohingya.

38:41

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Rohingya? All Rohingya?

BURAQ: Yes. Yes. All.

BURAQ: This is my friend.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Who was your friend? What was his name?

BURAQ: Mohamed Rafik. My friend. These are my classmates. My heart is wrenching. I can't bear it. I can't bear it. The broker killed him. Beating, beating. Calling for money. But if none, beating. Now dead here.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq knew

38:58

Buraq walking among graves

half the people he buried and could identify the rest.

39:50

With his own hands he buried at least 20 here. But he believes there are dozens more Rohingya buried by others, perhaps 100.

BURAQ: Rohingya here.

40:02

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): Buraq's former boss still lives in one of the houses overlooking the graves, buried here to avoid evidence of the dead being found at his jungle camps.

40:18

No matter what the threat is now to his life, Buraq is determined to directly accuse those he blames for the deaths of his friends and fellow Rohingyans - if there is a legal system that will listen.

BURAQ: Alom had his throat cut. Rohingya. Slaughtered by that smuggler there.

40:31

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): For Thai authorities, the biggest mass grave to be found in this whole sordid story may not be on a remote mountain top but in the middle of town and still under guard of the perpetrators.

40:59

ABDUL KALAM: Somebody come.

41:15

Kalam in car. Davis and rest depart

Let's go. Let's go. Let's must go. Let's go.

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): As we leave, Buraq's fears are confirmed as two traffickers' cars emerge from the house towards us.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Is that the broker?

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): A sign of their brazen impunity in this town.

ABDUL KALAM: Not one car: two, three car already.

41:17

Chutima, Kalam and others in car

Now, count two, three cars.

MARK DAVIS (off-screen): Three cars already? Coming?

ABDUL KALAM: Yes, coming. He want to shoot. So you do know this...

CHUTIMA SIDASATHIAN: This is, seriously, an area, this one: very, very dangerous. Yeah.

ABDUL KALAM: This is very dangerous for me.

41:44

View of street from car

Music

41:55

Border crossing point

MARK DAVIS (voiceover): The Rohingya graves lie just 800 metres from the official border crossing into their hoped-for refuge in Malaysia,

42:01

Padang Besar Police station

just behind the police station. If police there want to investigate, they just need step outside and take the first road on the left.

42:10

Buraq in cemetery

Just as in Myanmar, there are crimes, bodies and now witnesses - but not a lot of will, it seems, to investigate the deaths of the most unwanted people on the planet.

42:22

Back announce: You'll at least be reassured to know that key witnesses in tonight's story are now in a safe location. We've also told Thai authorities where they can find the mass grave.

42:40

Show background information

Reporter/camera: Mark Davis

Producer: Peter Cronau

Researchers: Patricia Drum

Mary Fallon

Editor: James Braye

Assistant editor: Kate Deegan

Archive producer: Michelle Baddiley

Graphic designer: Peta Bormann

Additional camera: David Leland