41 The Commission recorded testimony of survivors from the human-trafficking camp in Wang Kelian, whose descriptions of the camp matched the physical characteristics of the area discovered by Malaysian police, including tents of bamboo and plastic tarp and areas where armed traffickers oversaw the camp.101 Survivors described traffickers holding 50 to several hundred men, women, and children in the camp at any given time.102 Survivors, who believed they were held in the camp in Wang Kelian, described armed Thai men overseeing the camp.103 One woman was confined in the human-trafficking camp in Wang Kelian just before the Malaysian authorities raided the camp in January 2015. She said that the traffickers forced her and other captives to evacuate the camp ahead of the raid. She walked in the forest for five days before reaching Padang Besar in Perlis State on the Malaysia-Thailand border. She estimated that the traffickers held at least 200 people in the Wang Kelian camp when she was there in 2015.104 Following the military coup in Thailand in 2014, many of the human-trafficking camps reportedly moved deeper into the jungle and closer to the Malaysian border—in some cases, over the border into Malaysian territory.105 For example, a 48-year-old Rohingya trafficker living in Thailand’s Songkhla Province told Fortify Rights in September 2014: After the military coup [in Thailand], the camps moved farther to the border. Right now, [the traffickers] don’t keep the people for more than a few months. In the past, they kept them for four months or six months. Now they keep them just a few weeks and then move them to the Malaysian side. There are camps on the Malaysian side too. There, they are also kept in houses. In one house, there could be up to ten people .106 It is unknown precisely how many human-trafficking camps existed in Malaysia and Thailand since 2012—eyewitness testimony collected by Fortify Rights described what appeared to be at least dozens of disparate locations on both sides of the border. Survivors, who provided testimony for this report from 2013 to 2015, described how traffickers confined them not only in remote jungle camps but also in private homes in Malaysian towns and villages, depriving them of their liberty. In addition to the testimony of survivors, members of a human-trafficking syndicate and community-based aid workers interviewed for this report also confirmed that traffickers held Rohingya in such houses in Malaysian towns and cities, including in Kuala Lumpur. Members of a transnational syndicate typically held trafficked persons in remote camps on the Malaysia-Thailand border for several weeks and months, subjecting them to torture and other illtreatment. If the captives failed to raise enough money to buy their release or the traffickers could not otherwise sell them, then the traffickers transferred or sold them to a trafficker in a Malaysian town or city. Traffickers on the Malaysian side of the border then held the captives in houses until they were again sold or otherwise released. In some cases, traffickers brought Rohingya who purchased their release from the humantrafficking camps to houses while the captives awaited transport to their final destination. In those cases, Rohingya and traffickers referred to the houses as “receiving houses.” Seventeen-year-old “Abdul Haman” described being brought to one of these houses. He said: 101 The Commission interviews with W6, W7, W8, W11, W13, W14, W15, W16, W17, W18, and W19, Penang State, Malaysia, May 22-23, 2017. 102 Ibid. 103 The Commission interviews with W1, W2, W3, W4, W5, W6, W7, W8, W11, W13, W14, W15, W16, W17, W18, and W19, Penang State, Malaysia, May 22-23, 2017. 104 The Commission interview with W18, Penang State, Malaysia, May 23, 2017. 105 Fortify Rights interview with #42, Songkhla Province, Thailand, September 17, 2014. 106 Ibid.