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Thai trafficking officer flees to Australia
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Thailand’s highest-ranking police investigator in charge of human trafficking has fled to Australia, telling Australian media yesterday that he feared for his life after his findings implicated “influential people” at home who want to silence him.
Police Major General Paween Pongsirin told the Australian Broadcasting Corp and the Guardian Australia newspaper that he was too afraid to return to Thailand and planned to seek political asylum in Australia. A photograph showed him standing on the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne, where he said he had arrived a few days ago.
It was the first sighting of Paween in weeks, following unconfirmed reports in Thai media that he had fled.
Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection said it is unable to comment on individual asylum cases for privacy reasons.
Paween headed a high-profile task force created earlier this year after the discovery of 36 bodies and shallow graves in the mountains of southern Thailand in May. The finding exposed a network of jungle camps run by traffickers, who human rights groups have long said worked in complicity with corrupt Thai officials, a claim authorities always denied.
Thailand vowed a crackdown and put Paween in charge. Dozens of people were arrested, including local politicians in southern Thailand, government officials, police and a senior army officer.
Paween told The Guardian he faced pressure not to pursue the perpetrators too enthusiastically. His investigation was disbanded in September after five months, although it was far from finished, he said.
Soon after, he was abruptly transferred to an insurgency-plagued region of southern Thailand despite his protests that he would be targeted by traffickers and senior police involved in the trade. He quit his job and fled, he said.
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