(Thailand volunteer rescue workers remove the bodies of dead Burmese migrant workers Thursday, April 10, from the back of a seafood van in Ranong, Thailand. (Photo:AP)
Fifty-four Burmese migrants suffocated to death in a container truck on Wednesday in Ranong Province on the west coast of Thailand while they were attempting to enter the country illegally.
The deaths occurred in Suksamran District near Koh Thong, Burma. Among the victims, 37 were women and 17 were men. Sixty-seven migrants survived the ordeal.Twenty-one migrants were hospitalized while the rest were detained for questioning, according to a report from the The Prevention of HIV/AIDs Among Migrant Workers in Thailand Project (PHAMIT) on Thursday.
The truck was enroute to Phang Nga and Phuket in Southern Thailand, two locations where many illegal migrants seek work.
Police blamed the driver of the container truck for failing to turn on the air conditioning in the back of the truck. The surviving workers told police they sneaked into Ranong Province from Koh Thong in a fishing boat on Wednesday night and were then packed into a small container truck for the trip.
The workers told police that after about two hours many of them began falling sick because of poor ventilation in the container. The Burmese knocked loudly to signal the driver, and he eventually stopped the truck and discovered the bodies. He fled from the scene. A local villager alerted police.
Dr Pornpong Jitprathum, the director Suksamran Hospital, said forensic tests attributed the deaths to suffocation.
Pol Maj Gen Apirak Hongthong, the Ranong Provincial police commander, said police interrogated the owner of the truck, who is suspected of being involved in a smugPolice said the driver of the truck, who was identified as Suchon Bunplong, 38, of Ranong is missing.
The truck's owner, who was detained for questioning Thursday, claimed he was unaware the vehicle was being used to transport migrants from Burma, police said. He was not under arrest.
“The bodies were buried on Thursday morning in Hindad Graveyard in Ranong, but some relatives came to identify the bodies and take them back for a funeral,” a staff member of the Ranong Songkraoh Foundation told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
Television reports showed police lifting bodies out of the truck and images of the cargo-like container empty except for a few pieces of clothing. The dead migrants—many wearing little more than T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops—were seen laid out on the floor at a storage facility of a local charity.
Police did not immediately know what jobs they were heading for, but illegal migrants from Burma generally come to the country to work in the fishing and construction industries or as maids.
Survivors told police that they each paid 10,000 baht (US $314) to be smuggled into Thailand and they sneaked into Ranong province from Burma's Victoria Point by fishing boat on Wednesday night.
Ranong province is about 460 kilometers south of Bangkok just across from Burma's Victoria Point, and is regarding as a major point of trade between the two countries.
About 1 million workers are registered to work in Thailand, and an additional 1 million are estimated to be in the country illegally to work mostly as laborers, joining hundreds of thousands from Cambodia and Laos.
The illegal workers lack legal protection and are often ruthlessly exploited.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International found in a 2005 report that workers from Burma take jobs that Thais consider too dirty, dangerous or demeaning, "are routinely paid well below the Thai minimum wage, work long hours in unhealthy conditions and are at risk of arbitrary arrest and deportation."
Many also face great risk in reaching Thailand.In December, authorities recovered the bodies of 22 Burmese migrants found floating off the west coast of Thailand in the Andaman Sea. They were believed to be trying to enter Thailand illegally.
The incident was reminiscent of the deaths in 2001 of 58 illegal Chinese migrants in a sweltering tomato truck in Britain, which exposed the murky underworld of people-smuggling gangs profiting from migrants who hope to earn a living in more developed countries.
A group of 19 Latin American migrants died from overheating and suffocation in a tractor-trailer truck in the US state of Texas in 2003.
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