Hundreds of migrants abandoned at sea
by smugglers in Southeast Asia have reached land and relative safety in
the past two days. But an estimated 6,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya
Muslims from Myanmar remain trapped in crowded, wooden boats, migrant
officials and activists said Monday. With food and clean water running
low, some could be in grave danger.
Worried that vessels will start washing to shore with dead bodies, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the United States and several other foreign governments and international organizations held emergency meetings in recent days, but participants say there are no immediate plans to search for vessels in the busy Malacca Strait waterways.
One of the problems was determining what to do with the Rohingya if a rescue was launched, participants said on condition they not be named.
Seven boats were rescued Sunday after human traffickers abandoned the ships and left passengers to fend for themselves, officials said. Nearly 600 migrants were brought to shore in western Indonesia and just over a thousand others to Malaysia's Langkawi island.
Denied citizenship in Myanmar, the Rohingya are effectively stateless.
"At this point, I'm not sure what the concrete next steps are or should be," said Vivian Tan, the UNHCR's regional press officer in Bangkok, Thailand. "There is a real sense of urgency, but there doesn't seem to be a clear mechanism in this region for responding to something like this."
Moreover, she said, the location of the boats and the number of people on board needed to be clarified.
Some weak and hungry survivors waded to shore, others swam.
The Rohingya, who are Muslim, have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which considers them illegal settlers from Bangladesh even though many of their families arrived generations ago.
Attacks on members of the religious minority, numbering at around 1.3 million, have in the last three years left up to 280 people dead and forced 140,000 others from their homes. They now live under apartheid-like conditions in crowded camps just outside the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, where they have little access to school or adequate health care.
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Worried that vessels will start washing to shore with dead bodies, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the United States and several other foreign governments and international organizations held emergency meetings in recent days, but participants say there are no immediate plans to search for vessels in the busy Malacca Strait waterways.
One of the problems was determining what to do with the Rohingya if a rescue was launched, participants said on condition they not be named.
Seven boats were rescued Sunday after human traffickers abandoned the ships and left passengers to fend for themselves, officials said. Nearly 600 migrants were brought to shore in western Indonesia and just over a thousand others to Malaysia's Langkawi island.
Denied citizenship in Myanmar, the Rohingya are effectively stateless.
"At this point, I'm not sure what the concrete next steps are or should be," said Vivian Tan, the UNHCR's regional press officer in Bangkok, Thailand. "There is a real sense of urgency, but there doesn't seem to be a clear mechanism in this region for responding to something like this."
Moreover, she said, the location of the boats and the number of people on board needed to be clarified.
Some weak and hungry survivors waded to shore, others swam.
The Rohingya, who are Muslim, have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which considers them illegal settlers from Bangladesh even though many of their families arrived generations ago.
Attacks on members of the religious minority, numbering at around 1.3 million, have in the last three years left up to 280 people dead and forced 140,000 others from their homes. They now live under apartheid-like conditions in crowded camps just outside the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, where they have little access to school or adequate health care.
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