Six suspected members of a regional human trafficking ring have been arrested in Australia and Thailand after an year-long investigation involving several countries, Australian and Thai officials said on Wednesday.
Wedneday's arrests follow coordinated efforts by police in four nations for cracking down on human trafficking in the region. Although Indonesia and Malaysia also were involved in 'Operation Arapaima,' no arrests were made in those countries.
Thai police said they detained an Iraqi man and a Thai woman on passport forgery charges in the operation. They said 16 fake passports for the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Iran as well as machines for producing forged passports were seized from the detained.
Meanwhile, police in Australia said they had detained four people for trying to smuggle people into the country through South East Asia. The suspects were held in raids carried out in Sydney and Melbourne.
The Australian Federal Police said in a statement that the four detained were believed to be "key organizers and facilitators" of the human trafficking syndicate and they were charged with people-smuggling offenses.
"The organizers of these ventures are taking advantage of vulnerable people and are putting their lives at risk," police commander Jennifer Hurst told reporters.
Authorities believe that the traffickers sold the forged passports at exorbitant rates to people, mostly from the Middle East, seeking to begin a new life in Australia. The buyers would then use the forged Iranian or Iraqi passports to fly into Thailand and then to Australia using fake UAE passports.
Australia has become a coveted destination for desperate people from impoverished and war-torn countries seeking a new life. Many of them attempt to enter the country by making a perilous 230-mile voyage from Indonesia in rickety fishing boats, which are often operated by human-traffickers. It is estimated that more than 100 boats have brought over 5,000 asylum-seekers to Down Under since January last year.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard had earlier attempted to address the issue by reaching a refugee swap deal with Malaysia that would have allowed Australia to send 800 asylum-seekers to Malaysia in exchange for accepting 4,000 confirmed refugees from the Asian country over the next four years.
Nonetheless, Gillard was forced to drop the proposal after the country's High Court ruled that her plans to send asylum seekers to camps set up in other countries were unlawful, stating that the arrangement did not provide any guarantees that the rights of the asylum seekers sent to those countries would be protected.
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