By Max Constant
BANGKOK
International rights groups have called on Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia not to push back boats carrying Muslim Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, warning of the risk to thousands of human lives and the breaching of international obligations.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), urged the countries’ navies to “stop playing a three-way game of human ping pong,” as the world would judge how they treated “these most vulnerable men, women and children.”
He said the three Southeast Asian governments “have made things much worse with cold-hearted policies to push back this new wave of ‘boat people’ that puts thousands of lives at risk.”
The intergovernmental International Organization for Migration estimates that 8,000 migrants from western Myanmar and Bangladesh are currently on boats in the Andaman Sea and the Strait of Malacca, crammed in unsanitary conditions and with almost no food and drinking water.
More than 2,000 migrants have landed on Malaysian and Indonesian shores over the last few days, after Thai officials launched a crackdown earlier this month following the discovery of 33 corpses at an abandoned human-trafficking camp near the Malaysian border.
Malaysia’s deputy home minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar has said the government will turn back boats and deport migrants who land ashore, while earlier this week, Indonesia’s navy towed out to sea a ship carrying 400 migrants after supplying them with fuel, food and water.
Meanwhile, HRW said senior Thai officials have spoken of the government adopting a policy of pushing boats away from Thai shores after providing them with fuel, food and water.
Robertson called on other countries Thursday to “urge the three governments to work together to rescue these desperate people and offer them humanitarian aid, help in processing claims, and resettlement places for those in need of international protection.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has expressed particular concern for a boat drifting off the coast of southern Thailand with an estimated 350 people onboard.+
“The hundreds of people, believed to be from Myanmar or Bangladesh, have been at sea for ‘many days’, possibly more than two months,” according to a statement released late Wednesday.
“Their crew abandoned them several days ago. The passengers are without food and water and are in urgent need of medical care,” the statement added, confirming that Thai navy vessels were searching for the boat.
Kate Schuetze, the group’s Asia-Pacific researcher, called on Southeast Asian governments to “immediately stop this unfolding humanitarian crisis.”
“It is crucial that countries in the region launch coordinated search and rescue operations to save those at sea – anything less could be a death sentence for thousands of people,” she said.
Thailand’s junta chief-cum-Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha announced Tuesday that the country will host talks on the migrant crisis May 29 with senior officials from “15 affected countries” – primarily Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.
Rohingya -- and increasingly Bangladeshi – have been smuggled for years through Thailand in hopes of finding work in Malaysia, but the current crisis comes in the wake of the Thai crackdown. At least five large trafficking camps have been found in Songkhla province, while more than 250 Rohingya and Bangladeshi -- abandoned by smugglers -- have been arrested.
Under pressure, the smugglers have been ditching emaciated Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants in Malaysia and in Indonesia or abandoning their vessels, leaving the migrants onboard adrift at sea.
