IV. Testimony Suggesting Official Complicity in Human Trafficking 84 three hours of driving, we arrived to a camp in the jungle. The only people at the camp when we arrived were the dallals—two were Shan and six were Bengali. I don’t know what happened to the other people from the boat, but I think they were probably sold to different dallals.279 “Mohammed Hussein,” 19, described how traffickers brought him and others to an island near the Malaysian-Thailand border, and the Thai authorities gathered them from the island after spending one night there. He said: In the morning, the [Thai authorities] gathered all the people, and then the [state agency redacted] brought a big boat. We had to get on the boat. We were detained at a [state agency redacted] station for one night. From the police station, some of the guards took us from there to Padang Besar [in Thailand’s Songkhla Province]. It took seven hours. They piled us up in the car and covered us with tarpaulin. They piled us one on top of the other. If one person moved another shouted. They gathered all of us there, and we were moved to the jungle, to the mountain. Some people couldn’t walk very well because we were in the car for seven hours . . . It was a big [state agency redacted] truck that brought us from the [state agency redacted] station to another place, and then in the evening, at around 7:30 p.m., we had to get on the pickup trucks. There was one [state agency redacted] truck and two people. They wore [state agency redacted] uniforms. When the [state agency redacted] truck brought us, the [state agency redacted] car was in front. They handed us over to three pick-up trucks.280 Plain-clothed Thai men then transported Mohammed Hussein and 58 others overland in a caravan of three pickup trucks. Eventually, the caravan arrived at a remote camp: “When we arrived at the camp in the mountain there were many groups of people around the mountain . . . The guard said, just sleep and do not speak. If anyone speaks, we will beat you.”281 “Khun R.,” a wealthy Thai man who worked in concert with Thai authorities and individuals believed to be at the head of a criminal syndicate, acknowledged the role of the Thai authorities in the trafficking of Rohingya. He said: It is the [state agency redacted] and [state agency redacted] that take care of the Rohingya now. They are helping the Rohingya to go to the third country. Thailand doesn’t keep them locked up here. We are finding a way to help them to go to the third country, because if they stay longer in Thailand, we have the costs to feed them. The country is Muslim, that’s why they want to go to Malaysia . . . It’s going to be good for [Rohingya] to stay with the [state agency redacted] because the [state agency redacted] don’t imprison them. They just want them to go to the third country. We have to understand the [state agency redacted]. The [state agency redacted] don’t harm them, they just want to take care of them, and as soon as they can, just move them on.282 Several known human traffickers testified for this report that members of a transnational criminal syndicate routinely paid Thai officials. In 2014, a mid-level trafficker of Rohingya ethnicity in Malaysia said: “The boats must pay money to the Thais. Give money, you get everything. No money, you get nothing. The Thai bosses talk with the authorities, so we don’t know exactly how much they get. The Thai [state agency redacted] supports them to come here [to Malaysia].283” In Bangkok, another known trafficker with a transnational criminal syndicate, himself Rohingya, explained: 279 Fortify Rights interview with #78, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 2014. 280 Fortify Rights interview with #40, Pattani Province, Thailand, September 16, 2014. 281 Ibid. 282 Fortify Rights interview with #70, southern Thailand, September 2014. 283 Fortify Rights interview with #61, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 28, 2015.