Human trafficking camps and mass graves discovered in Malaysia

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  We travel now to Malaysia, where thousands of migrants, fleeing persecution and impoverishment, are spending weeks trapped at sea, find a different nightmare when they finally land ashore.

  Jonathan Sparks of Independent Television News reports.

• And a warning:

  The story contains some graphic elements.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  We were taken in army trucks to the bottom of the mountain, where the Malaysian authorities said they'd found a human traffickers' camp. This was a significant development. Last week, they vehemently denied there were any.

  We're still going, are we? We're still going to the camp?

• MAN:

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  The order was given and we began to climb. Yesterday, the Malaysians came clean, admitting there were at least 28 of these camps where traffickers held thousands of migrants, persecuted Burmese Muslims called Rohingya and impoverished Bangladeshis.

  And we followed in their footsteps, men, women and children forced up and down this trail. The track is rough, and it's also very steep, but you can see that it's well used. There's litter all over the place. And it's difficult to believe that local people and members of the authorities didn't know that there were hundreds of people living out here.

  The camp took shape from a distance. Such was it size, it wasn't easy to hide a bamboo jail that stretched across a mountain clearing, but further details were hard to come by.

  How many people do you think were kept there?

• MAN:

  I'm not sure.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  Not sure?

• MAN:

  Not sure, yes.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  We have been given a few seconds to walk through the camp, but I think that's the wrong name for this place. It's more like a village or a prison complex.

  There are cells wrung with barbed wire and watchtowers and food and water storage facilities. There's even a cage where people were kept, I presume, because they tried to escape. Clearly, it was a place of real cruelty, where hundreds were held for the purposes of extortion.

  To earn their release, the victims' family members had to pay a ransom of $2,000 to $3,000. Later, we spoke to young Rohingya who was held for seven months in a jungle camp.

• SHARUF KHAN, Rohingya Migrant (through interpreter):

  Brokers told our relatives to send the money and beat us while we were on the phone. They're very bad people. There's little to eat here. Some people starve. Many are sick.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  Sharuf managed to escape two months ago, but many prisoners never leave. Up on the mountain, forensics teams have begun examining 37 graves, or burial pits. And on the earth's surface, we saw bone fragments.

• SHARUF KHAN (through interpreter):

  One man didn't have any money to pay the ransom, so the brokers beat him. They had handed him over to the camp guards and said, "You can finish him." The guards took a rope and hanged him. I saw it.

• JOHN SPARKS:

  It is an odious business, and it's gone on for years.

  But the authorities here in Malaysia and neighboring Thailand seem determined to uncover the truth, the Thais making more than 60 arrests. Still, many think the traffickers will soon return to the mountains.