On the human smugglers’ trail

It was just a rusty cargo ship. But when the MV Ocean Lady arrived off the British Columbia coast in 2009 carrying 76 migrants, it signaled that Canada had become a target of Southeast Asia’s human smuggling syndicates. The next ship, the MV Sun Sea, came last August, this time with 492 migrants on board, some of them former Sri Lankan rebels. And it’s not over yet.The RCMP believes the smugglers are working from Thailand, Malaysia and Laos to send yet another migrant ship to the West Coast. The smuggling runs are dangerous, as the images of a migrant ship breaking up off Australia’s Christmas Island last December attest. Twenty-eight died that morning. They are also costly. The Canadian government has spent $25-million to date dealing with the MV Sun Sea. But someone is making money from it. Who are they? In a four-part investigative series that begins Saturday, the National Post takes readers on the smugglers’ trail.

In Part One, we identify for the first time the members of the smuggling network believed to be behind the migrant ships. We expose how they operate and meet one of the suspects in a Bangkok prison.

In Part Two, we reveal the untold story of the Canadians whose names and photos appear in Thai police files in connection with the Sun Sea smuggling operation.

In Part Three, we introduce readers to the Canadian and Thai police officials trying to stop the smugglers.

And in Part Four we shine a light on the dark side of Canada’s anti-human smuggling program: the hundreds of migrants who have been rounded up and held in an overcrowded Thai prison.

Despite an international crackdown, the organizers of the networks are still on the loose. And they are still recruiting passengers willing to pay handsomely to be shipped to Canada.

“While you are interviewing me,” Lieutenant-General Pongpat Chayapan of the Royal Thai Police said in an interview, “I am aware that there is a network, a smuggling ring, that is preparing to smuggle people over to Canada.”

Canada is now a target of Southeast Asia’s human smuggling syndicates. This is a side-story to the first instalment of a four-part investigative series, the Post’s Stewart Bell identifies the suspected members of the criminal network that has been sending migrant ships to Canada.
BANGKOK — The Vembus Restaurant is a small room with green wallpaper and a big ceiling fan that spins above tables covered with plates of spicy South Indian food.
The owner, Vidya Shankar, is from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo and he estimates there are 2,000 to 3,000 of his countrymen in Bangkok, most of them waiting to travel to other countries.
“So many refugees are here,” he says.In 2009, one of them appeared at the modest hotel Mr. Shankar runs above his restaurant. His name was Siandran. He was a young man of 19 or 20, and he confided that he had been a member of the Tamil Tigers rebels.
He had no money to pay for his room and board so Mr. Shankar put him to work cooking at the restaurant and packing shoes for export to Sri Lanka (Mr. Shankar’s other business). “He worked hard,” Mr. Shankar said. “He didn’t have any money, very poor.”
Siandran stayed in Bangkok for months. And then one day last year he just left. Mr. Shankar said he did not hear from him again until last month when Siandran called.
He said he was in Canada.
Siandran had been aboard the MV Sun Sea, the human smuggling vessel that arrived off the British Columbia coast last August. Mr. Shankar said he knew nothing about Siandran’s smuggling plans.
But others in the Silom neighborhood said it was widely known that a ship was being readied to take Sri Lankans to Canada.
In Silom, Sri Lankans find a temple, cheap rent and familiar meals. “They can get the food at the temple sometimes, even they can share the room,” said Oliver, a Sri Lankan eating at Mr. Shankar’s restaurant.
Most want to go to Canada but a police crackdown that began last fall has made that more difficult and Tamils are no longer confident they can transit through Bangkok to the West, he added.
Some of those who got on the Sun Sea had been involved in the Tamil Tigers, said one member of the community who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals.
The Immigration and Refugee Board has already ordered the deportation of two of them, both found to have been members of the rebel naval wing. Another whom the government had accused of being a former rebel was found not to have been a member the Tigers.
The recent arrests of Sri Lankans awaiting ships in Bangkok has driven some to the outskirts of the city, said the longtime Silom resident, adding they are all waiting to go elsewhere. “Not only Canada,” he said. “Any country.”
Not far away, at the Saverah Inn, an employee recognizes a photo of a man who allegedly helped organize the Sun Sea smuggling operation — and who is now in Canada. Locals said the smugglers housed some of their human cargo at the hotel until they were brought south to board the ship.
The hotel is in a small alley in an Indian neighborhood. Portraits of Thailand’s king and queen hang behind the counter. A tenant said tour groups of 20 or 30 would stay for a few days but he did not recall anything untoward.
Owner Ajmal Khan said he simply rented rooms and knew nothing about smuggling. “What they are doing, we are not interested,” he said, adding he no longer rented rooms to Sri Lankans.
National Post
sbell@nationalpost.com