Thailand
and the United States have begun military surveillance flights in a race
against time to locate stranded Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants stranded on
rickety boats in the Andaman Sean and the Bay of Bengal.
U.S.
State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said Tuesday that U.S. Navy P8 aircraft
flew over the weekend with Malaysian support.
More
than 3,500 migrants have already landed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand
this month, but thousands more are believed to be trapped at sea in boats
abandoned by their captains.
Human
traffickers have also abandoned jungle camps on land. Malaysia was exhuming
remains Tuesday from graves at a suspected transit point used by traffickers
near the Thai border.
The
sea search operation is especially difficult as many of the migrant boats
resemble the thousands of fishing vessels in the region. Harrowing testimonies
from surviving migrants have emerged describing people dying from starvation,
dehydration and disease on the boats and being thrown overboard.
Human
Rights Watch published
the harrowing accounts of some survivors this week:
“One
Rohingya girl told Human Rights Watch: “We spent two months on that boat, more
people kept coming to the big boat, small boats all the time. We [the women]
were under the boat, it was so small. I couldn’t see outside the boat, just
feel it go up and down. People were throwing up, I felt dizzy and uncomfortable
the whole time.”
Another
Rohingya girl said: “When I got to the big boat … I cannot explain my feeling I
was so scared. We were about 16 people in one small room. The doors were always
locked. The smugglers put the food and water through a small hole, we never saw
them.”
Efforts
to save the migrants have been stepped up since Indonesia and Malaysia agreed
to offer them temporary asylum.
Thailand
said Tuesday it had begun air reconnaissance missions looking for stranded
migrant boats in the Andaman Sea.
Thailand
is hosting a regional meeting on the crisis in Bangkok on Friday.
Additional
reporting from Associated Press
By Asian Correspondent Staff - Photo AP
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