"The underground world of human trafficking on the Malaysian-Thai border is one of corruption and broken dreams... ALOR SETAR, Malaysia — ?Malaysian migration officers sold me to a human trafficking gang located near the Thai-Malaysian border,? said Lwin Ko, one of thousands of victims of human trafficking in Malaysia. Like many other Burmese migrant workers and refugees in Malaysia, he was arrested for illegal entry into the country. After processing in an immigration detention center, he said, immigration officers transferred him directly to a gang of human traffickers, who treated him as a ?hostage,? or slave, to be held for a lucrative ransom. Migrant workers are apprehended and led to an open area by civilian security volunteers to have their documents inspected during an immigration raid in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. (Photo: AFP) If no ransom was forthcoming after a few weeks, Lwin Ko would be passed on like many others to work as a crewman on a fishing boat or, for women, to work as household servants or as prostitutes in brothels..."