The four men in the mugshots below are said to be Malaysians, according to the Malaysiakini report a few days ago.
They don’t look very ‘Malaysian’ to me but more like a certain ‘xyz’ people from a certain ‘abc’ place.
The four above – who did not have valid travel documents – were detained by Thai authorities on suspicion of drug smuggling, said a Bernama report on Feb 19.
They were arrested in Tak Bai, Narathiwat (a southern Thailand border province) after entering our neighbouring country through lorong tikus.
Thai police are investigating if the suspects were on their way to Bangkok to collect a supply of methamphetamine (meth).
From my earlier blog posts
“Rakhine state (in Myanmar) has become a kind of drug highway” for the meth market, said the International Crisis Group last year.
Rohingya refugees fleeing Rakhine are exploited to smuggle yaba, i.e. low grade meth sold in pill form, into Bangladesh, said the Wilson Center in May 2020 — see its tweet below.
“Between 2017 and 2018, authorities arrested more than 100 Rohingya crossing the border into Bangladesh on drug trafficking charges,” said the Wilson Center report.
Bangladesh stiffened its penalties for drug crime following the Rohingya mass exodus to Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong in Aug-Sept 2017.
“The stern punishments were proposed in the new law as yaba has spread across Bangladesh in a massive scale in recent times,” Cabinet Secretary Md Shafiul Alam told the Dhaka Tribune on 8 Oct 2018.
There are consistent media reports – see below – of yaba being seized in Cox’s Bazar from drug peddlers by Bangladeshi authorities.
Helen Ang 