KOH LIPE, THAILAND/ LANGSA, INDONESIA (REUTERS) – A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels yesterday, the latest round of “maritime ping-pong” by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
The United Nations has called on countries around the Andaman Sea not to push back the thousands of desperate Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar now stranded in rickety boats, and to rescue them instead.
“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,” said Jeffrey Savage, who works with the UNHCR refugee agency in Indonesia, where some 1,400 migrants have landed over the past week.
Nearly 800 came ashore near Langsa in Indonesia’s Aceh province on Friday, many with stories of a grueling voyage that included push-backs from the Malaysian and Indonesian coasts.
Mahmud Rafiq, a 21-year-old Rohingya man who left Myanmar a month ago, recounted how an Indonesian navy ship given them food and medicine before towing their boat to Malaysian waters, where they were again stopped, given supplies and taken right back.
While adrift at sea, he said, the Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants had fought fiercely over dwindling supplies of food.
“We had very little food, and we agreed that we would leave it for the women and children,” said Rafiq. “Then they started hitting us. They took the food.
They pushed many of us overboard. They beat us and attacked us with knives. I was hit with a wooden plank on the head and on my legs.”