Arakan News Agency
The Thai government on Tuesday announced that it would host a summit May 29 to address illegal migration in the region, as a crisis triggered by its crackdown on human smuggling has grown increasingly dire for migrants themselves.
International organizations warned that thousands of men, women and children could be crammed aboard boats drifting at sea between Myanmar and Malaysia, and pleaded with governments in the region to assist them.
“What we’re hearing from these people is that they’ve been stuck out at sea for weeks and months and then the smugglers just deserted them, left them with very little food and water, no fuel for the engines,” Jeffrey Savage of the Jakarta office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told Reuters.
Thailand’s crackdown has halted departures of boats from the Bay of Bengal, but those still at sea have been there “for weeks or even months,” International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesman Joe Lowry said.
“Up to 8,000 people are at sea, of which more than 1,000 have landed,” he said.
On Tuesday, Bangladesh rescued 116 Malaysia-bound migrants from a Thai-owned boat abandoned by its crew off the coast of Myanmar, according to Reuters.
But Malaysia, overwhelmed by the arrival of 1,158 migrants since Sunday, announced it would turn away migrant vessels unless they were sinking.
Seaworthy boats would be supplied provisions and sent away, the Associated Press quoted Tan Kok Kwee of Malaysia’s Maritime Enforcement Agency as saying Tuesday.
A day earlier, Indonesia turned a migrant boat back to Malaysia after fishermen had rescued close to 600 migrants from the Strait of Malacca on Sunday.
Source :RFA
