A Thai-registered vehicle passing by a road block near Malaysia-Thai border at Wang Kelian, Perlis, under the watchful eyes of police personnel from Battalion 2 of D Company, General Operation Force (PGA). - Photo: ZHAFARAN NASIB / The Star
KANGAR: Residents along the Perlis border with Thailand feel a lot safer now.
Gone are the days when villagers would stumble upon illegal immigrants pleading for food and basic necessities like clothing and footwear.
Thanks to frequent border patrols by the police and the army, illegal immigrants are no longer coming into the country via that route.
But the villagers remember the days before the Wang Kelian discovery in March 2015.
Then, 28 illegal immigrants’ transit camps and 139 mass graves were discovered near the village. A total of 130 skeletal remains were found in the shallow graves.
Kampung Wang Kelian villager Md Razak Md Daud, 71, remembers the illegals who stumbled across the border as being badly soiled and in poor physical shape after crossing the dense jungle from Thailand into Malaysia.
The former village head believed that there could still be some illegal crossings, although the illegals now avoid all contact with locals.
“Before 2015, we often saw illegal immigrants, some on foot and some travelling in vehicles, passing by our homes, but now things have changed,” he said.
He said it was clear that border patrols intensified greatly after the discovery of the graves at the Wang Burma and Wang Perah hills in 2015.
A villager who wanted to be known only as Roshid suspected that the smugglers’ trails, also called “lorong tikus”, were still being used to smuggle Malaysia’s subsidised diesel and petrol into Thailand.
“They will use any means, not only for diesel and petrol but for other items as well,” he said.
Universiti Sains Malaysia criminologist Datuk Dr P. Sundramoorthy said the Wang Kelian tragedy should be a lesson for Malaysia and serve as a reminder of the need for intense border patrols.
“All measures and precautions, I believe, should be taken to secure the long borderline from Kelantan to Perlis. But smugglers and criminals will always find ways to beat the system,” he said.
He urged the government to invest in modern surveillance systems and even fencing systems. Although illegal border activities were hard to eliminate, he said “they must be minimised”.
Former commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, Jerald Joseph, said the root of the problem was corrupt officials who helped human traffickers and smugglers.
“The recent arrests of immigration and other enforcement agents were only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
