A wooden fishing boat carrying hundreds of migrants from Burma moved farther out to sea yesterday after the Thai authorities concluded that the passengers wanted to continue their journey instead of disembarking in Thailand, according to an aid group involved in negotiations over the ship’s fate.
But a Thai reporter who witnessed the boat’s departure said some of those aboard did not appear to want to leave. Journalists found the boat adrift in the Andaman Sea on Thursday, its crew gone and its passengers crying for food and water.
The vessel, which passengers said had been turned away from Malaysia, is part of a rickety flotilla from Burma and Bangladesh believed to be at sea, carrying an exodus of thousands of migrants, many of them Rohingya Muslims, fleeing persecution or economic hardship with no country willing to take them in.
Indonesia
Another boat carrying at least 660 landed in Indonesia after being rescued by local fishermen, a UN official said. An Indonesian military spokesman said its navy had intercepted a third ship carrying hundreds of others in the Strait of Malacca yesterday and was preventing it from coming ashore.
An estimated 6,000 to 20,000 people fleeing ethnic persecution in Burma and poverty in Bangladesh are said to be on boats in the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait, unable to find a country that will give them refuge. Some have been abandoned by their traffickers with little food or water.
In a statement UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein rebuked Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia for turning back the vessels.
Vulnerable migrants
“I am appalled at reports that Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have been pushing boats full of vulnerable migrants back out to sea, which will inevitably lead to many avoidable deaths,” he said. “The focus should be on saving lives not further endangering them.”
He also emphasised Burma’s responsibility in the unfolding crisis, saying that until its government addressed “the institutional discrimination against the Rohingya population, including equal access to citizenship, this precarious migration will continue.” – (New York Times service)