In Asian Seas, a Migrant Boat Finds Nowhere to Land
By
Aubrey Belford & Kaweewit Kaewjinda on 04:12 pm May 17, 2015
Category
Featured,
Front Page,
Human Rights,
News
Tags:
Malaysia,
refugees,
Rohingya,
Thailand human trafficking
A Malaysian navy vessel patrols waters near Langkawi Island on Sunday. 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. 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. (Reuters Photo/Olivia Harris)
Andaman Sea. For several days, the fate of roughly 300 desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants has been subject to a repetitive dance in waters just out of sight of gleaming Thai beach resorts.
Their boat, which those on board say has been at sea for up to three months, was found drifting last Thursday near Koh Lipe Island, close to the Malaysian border, with parts of its engine missing. Thai sailors fixed the engine and handed the migrants food and water, before turning them back out to the Andaman Sea.
That was the beginning of what local Thai navy chief Lieutenant Commander Veerapong Nakprasit calls “a cycle,” with the overcrowded fishing vessel bouncing between the waters of two countries determined not to take them in.
This rickety boat was just one of many that are at the center of a regional crisis triggered by a flood of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
Migrants have long made their way from the Bay of Bengal’s southeast corner to Thailand, but a crackdown on traffickers by the Thai government disrupted the route and several thousand were left at sea with nowhere to go, though more than 2,000 have made it to the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia.
Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had informed the people on the boat found off Koh Lipe that they could come ashore for humanitarian assistance, but “they informed the Thai side that they wished to travel onward.”
After being towed out on Friday, it headed southwest, according to Thai navy radar tracking seen by Reuters. It then took a jagged counterclockwise arc toward Malaysian waters, before its engine stopped and it drifted again in the sea.
Hunger, mounting tension
Piecing together what happened to the migrants after that is difficult to establish because of contradictory accounts from Thai officials and near-total silence from Malaysia.
On Saturday, Reuters journalists in a speedboat spotted the boat tethered to the side of a Thai navy patrol vessel. The boat’s engine was running and it was being dragged southwest across the Malacca Strait toward Indonesia’s Aceh province.
As the Reuters team pulled alongside the migrants’ boat, hundreds of rake-thin migrants could be seen huddling shoulder-to-shoulder on the deck, sheltering from the harsh sun with whatever they could find, including the torn-up boxes of food handed to them by the Thai navy earlier.
Men shouted from the boat, but could not be heard above the din of the engines. Women and children stared out and cried.
As Thai sailors yelled “Go away! Go, go!” at the journalists, the migrants’ boat was released, and it again arced under its own power back toward Malaysia, where two Malaysian vessels were seen intercepting it.
A Thai navy officer who questioned the Reuters journalists at sea described tension and increasing desperation on the boat.
The officer, who declined to be named, said the boat appeared to be under the control of two or three “agents” who insisted on going to Malaysia over objections from some passengers and had hoarded food and water provided by the military. The engine was found on Saturday with water in it, a possible sign it had been sabotaged, he said.
“The women and children are not getting fed,” he said, adding that when the boat was first intercepted near Koh Lipe they had to force the agents to give them food.
“The first time they were intercepted, everyone wanted to go to Malaysia. Today some of them wanted to come to Thailand but the men ordered them back,” he said.
Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project which tracks Rohingya migrant boats, said she had been told of mounting tensions on the boat that could break out into open conflict.
“They could even kill each other,” she said.
Several hours later, another Reuters team spotted the migrants’ vessel again tethered to the Thai navy patrol boat. It was unclear if it had been pushed back by the Malaysians.
Veerapong said that, as of Saturday night, the boat had been turned and was heading once again in the direction of Indonesia.
Reuters
In Asian Seas, a Migrant Boat Finds Nowhere to Land - The Jakarta Globe
Malaysia launches talks
amid Asia's growing migrant
crisis
Eileen Ng, The Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | World | Sun, May 17 2015, 5:19 PM
Seek hope: A Rohingya boy looks out from his parent's shanty on the fringes of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Sunday. Malaysia is the current chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been criticized for long ignoring the plight of Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar.
(AP/Joshua Paul)
Malaysia launched a series of high-level talks with its neighbors Sunday, seeking a solution to a deepening crisis in which boatloads of refugees are stranded off Southeast Asia's shores, with no country willing to take them in.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman met with his counterpart from Bangladesh, Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, ahead of meetings scheduled with the Indonesian and Thai foreign ministers in the coming days, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Boatloads of more than 2,000 members of Myanmar's ethnic Rohingya Muslim community fleeing persecution and migrants from Bangladesh trying to escape poverty have landed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in recent weeks. But thousands more are stranded at sea after a crackdown on human traffickers prompted captains and smugglers to abandon their human cargo.
Malaysia is the current chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been criticized for long ignoring the plight of the Rohingya.
On Friday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak vowed to take action as urgent calls to address the growing humanitarian crisis poured in from the United Nations, the United States and others.
"This is an issue of international and regional importance," Najib said. "We are in contact with all relevant parties, with whom we share the desire to find a solution to this crisis."
ASEAN adheres to a strict policy of non-interference, which in the past has blocked public criticism of Myanmar and critics say enables member states to commit abuses without consequences.
The U.N. has called the Rohingya one of the world's most persecuted groups. For decades, they have faced state-sanctioned discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. In the past three years, Rohingya have been targeted by violent mobs of Buddhist extremists that left hundreds dead and sparked an exodus of boat people fleeing on rickety, overcrowded vessels operated by human trafficking syndicates.
Most are trying to reach Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that has hosted more than 45,000 Rohingya over the years but now says it can't accept any more. Indonesia and Thailand have voiced similar stances — fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants.
The Malaysian and Bangladeshi foreign ministers met in Sabah state on Borneo island Sunday as part of a pre-planned annual consultation between the two countries, the official said.
Malaysia's Anifah is also expected to meet with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on Monday and hold talks with his Thai counterpart, Gen. Tanasak Patimapragorn, in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, the official said.
Efforts were being made to meet with representatives from Myanmar, he said, without elaborating.
Myanmar's cooperation is seen as vital to solving the crisis, but its government has already cast doubt on whether it will attend a conference to be hosted by Thailand on May 29 that is to include 15 Asian nations affected by the emergency.
"We are not ignoring the migrant problem, but our leaders will decide whether to attend the meeting based on what is going to be discussed," Maj. Zaw Htay, director of the office of Myanmar's president, said Saturday. "We will not accept the allegations by some that Myanmar is the source of the problem."
He put some of the blame on Myanmar's neighbors, saying that from a humanitarian point of view, "it's sad that these people are being pushed out to sea by some countries."
An increasingly alarmed United Nations warned Friday against "floating coffins" and called on regional leaders to put human lives first. The United States urged governments not to push back new boat arrivals.
___
Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report. (**)
- See more at: Malaysia launches talks amid Asia's growing migrant crisis | The Jakarta Post
I can understand why the Rohingya's fleeing from the prosecution and fear of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, but Bangladesh? and their number is large too
