Koh
Lipe. Malaysian vessels on Saturday intercepted a boat crammed with
migrants after the Thai navy towed it away from Thailand, the latest of a
number of vessels pushed back to sea by governments who have ignored a UN call
for an immediate rescue.
Thousands
of people are adrift in the Andaman Sea after smugglers abandoned their vessels
following a Thai crackdown on human trafficking. Many of the migrants are
thirsty and sick.
Migrants
aboard the vessel were visibly distressed on the packed deck under a blazing
sun, a Reuters witness said. Women were crying and some waved their arms and
shouted, he said.
The
boat has been towed back out to sea by the Thai navy twice after drifting for
days. On both occasions, the navy fixed its engine and supplied it with food,
water and fuel before towing it out of Thai waters.
The
migrants told the Thai navy on Saturday they wanted to go to Malaysia, the
officer aboard a patrol boat told Reuters.
“We
fixed their engine and showed them where Malaysia is,” the officer said.
After
the Thais released it, the boat entered neighboring Malaysian waters where it
was intercepted, he said. He declined to give his name.
It
was unclear what the Malaysian authorities would do with the migrants. But
Malaysia’s government said this week it would push boats back to sea as it did
not want to receive large numbers of illegal migrants.
The
International Organization for Migration has criticised the region’s
governments for playing “maritime ping-pong” with the migrants and endangering
their lives.
The
United Nations this week urged governments to fulfil an obligation to rescue
those at sea and “keep their borders and ports open … to help the vulnerable
people who are in need.”
But
there was no sign of a coordinated rescue operation, the UN refugee agency
UNHCR said on Saturday.
“We’re
not seeing any such moves from any governments in the region even though we’re
calling on the international community to take action because people are
dying,” Jeffrey Savage, who works with the UNHCR in Indonesia, told Reuters on
Saturday.
While
many remain at sea, thousands have made it to land.
Nearly
800 migrants came ashore in Aceh in Indonesia on Friday, taking the number that
have made land in Indonesia and the northwest of Malaysia to more than 2,500
over the past week.
Thailand
found 106 more migrants on Friday on an island in the southern province of
Phang Nga, provincial governor Prayoon Rattanasenee told Reuters. It was
unclear how they got there, he said.
“Most
of them are men but there are also women and children,” Prayoon said. “We are
trying to determine whether they were victims of human trafficking.”
The
Thai clamp-down has made the preferred trafficking route through Thailand too
risky for criminals preying on Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar
and Bangladeshis seeking to escape poverty.
An
estimated 25,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya boarded smugglers’ boats in the
first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the
UNHCR has said.
The
United Nations said the deadly pattern of migration by sea across the Bay of
Bengal would continue unless Myanmar ended discrimination.
Most
of Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in
apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state in the west of the predominantly
Buddhist country. Almost 140,000 were displaced in clashes with ethnic Rakhine
Buddhists in 2012.
Myanmar
uses the term “Bengalis” for the Rohingya, a name most Rohingya reject because
it implies they are immigrants from Bangladesh despite having lived in Myanmar
for generations.
Thailand
is hosting talks on May 29 for 15 countries to discuss migration in the region.
Myanmar
had not received an invitation to the talks and would not attend if the word
Rohingya was used, Zaw Htay, a senior official from the president’s office,
said on Saturday.
“We
haven’t received any formal invitation from Thailand officially yet,” he said
in an emailed response to questions from Reuters.
“And
another thing, if they use the term ‘Rohingya’ we won’t take part in it since
we don’t recognise this term. The Myanmar government has been protesting
against the use of it all along.”
Photo:
Rohingya migrants on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of
Koh Lipe in the Andaman Sea. (AFP Photo/Christophe)
Jakarta
Globe / Reuters
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