Closed for business: Asia's human smugglers go to ground

[WorldNews]

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By Aubrey Belford SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - The rickety internet huts have fallen silent in the crowded camps of displaced Rohingya Muslims in western Myanmar, no one comes anymore to bargain for the release of loved ones being held for ransom in Thailand and Malaysia. "Before, every day at least 10 to 15 people would come here to negotiate with human traffickers," said Tun Win, a young man who offers a video-call service from one of the bamboo and thatch huts, "Now, it's nothing." For now at least, the smugglers who preyed for years on the misery of Myanmar's Rohingya appear to be going out of business, and Asia's most acute migrant crisis since the 'boat people' exodus at the end of the Vietnam War is ebbing. Rohingya and their neighbors in Bangladesh, dreaming of a life free of persecution and poverty, were lured on to primitive boats in their thousands, taking perilous voyages from the southeast corner of the Bay of Bengal that they hoped would end with safety and jobs in Malaysia.

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