Bangkok/Kuala Lumpur: Thailand arrested the suspected kingpin of a human trafficking network on Monday, the latest bust in a crackdown on people smuggling that has triggered a humanitarian crisis on the region’s seas.

The foreign ministers of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia will meet in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday to discuss how to tackle trafficking, after the clampdown led criminals to abandon boats crammed with thousands of migrants rather than risk landing on Thai shores.

Boatloads of Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have arrived in the waters of Indonesia and Malaysia, and many thousands more migrants remain adrift.

Myanmar blamed neighbors looking for cheap labor for encouraging the flow of illegal migrants after coming under pressure to stop the persecution of Muslims that has led many to flee, only to find themselves victims of traffickers.

The Royal Thai Police said they suspected Patchuban Angchotipan, a former official in the provincial government of the southern Satun province, was the boss of a large human trafficking network.

‘In Satun province he is high-level,’ said Thai national police chief General Somyot Poompanmuang. ‘He is the chief. He has many subordinates.’

Patchuban, whose nickname is ‘Kor Tong’, has been charged with a range of offences including human trafficking, smuggling illegal migrant workers into Thailand, detention of others leading to bodily harm and holding people for ransom.

He denies the charges against him.

Thailand ordered a clean-up of suspected traffickers’ camps earlier this month after 33 bodies, believed to be of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, were found in shallow graves near the Malaysian border.

Bangkok is under international pressure to show progress after the United States last year downgraded Thailand and Malaysia to its list of the worst centres of human trafficking.