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THIS AMAZING STORY COMES FROM THE NEW-YORK TIMES;
LIPE ISLAND, Thailand — A wooden fishing boat carrying hundreds of desperate migrants from Myanmar moved farther out to sea on Friday after the Thai authorities concluded that the passengers wanted to continue their journey instead of disembarking in Thailand, according to an aid group involved in negotiations over the ship’s fate.
But a Thai reporter who witnessed the boat’s departure said that some of those aboard did not appear to want to leave.
Journalists had found the boat adrift in the Andaman Sea on Thursday, its crew gone and its passengers crying for food and water. The vessel, which passengers said had been turned away from Malaysia, is part of a rickety flotilla from Myanmar and Bangladesh believed to be at sea, carrying thousands of migrants, many of them Rohingya Muslims, fleeing persecution or economic hardship, with no country willing to take them in.
Another boat carrying at least 660 migrants landed in Indonesia on Friday morning after being rescued by local fishermen, a United Nations official said. And an Indonesian military spokesman said that the Indonesian Navy intercepted a third ship carrying hundreds of others in the Strait of Malacca on Friday morning and was preventing it from coming ashore.
Continue reading the main storyVideo A wooden fishing boat carrying several hundred migrants from Myanmar was seen adrift west of the Thai mainland on Thursday. By Thomas Fuller on Publish DateMay 14, 2015. Photo by Thomas Fuller/The New York Times.Myanmar Migrants Spotted in Andaman Sea
In an escalating regionwide crisis, an estimated 6,000 to 20,000 people fleeing ethnic persecution in Myanmar and poverty in Bangladesh are said to be on boats in the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait. Some have been abandoned by their traffickers with little food or water.
In a statement on Friday, the United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, rebuked Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia for turning back the vessels. “I am appalled at reports that Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have been pushing boats full of vulnerable migrants back out to sea, which will inevitably lead to many avoidable deaths,” he said. “The focus should be on saving lives not further endangering them.”
Mr. al-Hussein also emphasized Myanmar’s responsibility in the unfolding crisis, saying that until its government addressed “the institutional discrimination against the Rohingya population, including equal access to citizenship, this precarious migration will continue.”
The departure of the boat from Thailand’s waters came after the Thai authorities repaired its engine and provided food, water, batteries and enough fuel for 33 hours of travel, said Lt. Cmdr. Veerapong Nakprasit, the commander of a Thai naval base here.
GRAPHIC
Understanding Southeast Asia’s Migrant Crisis
About 25,000 migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh on rickety smugglers’ boats in the first three months of 2015, according to a United Nations estimate.
The ship is without qualified crew; the captain and five other crew members abandoned the ship last week, according to passengers. But Commander Veerapong said the navy had trained the passengers “so they can reach their dream destination. We have verified that they can navigate on their own.”
He did not specify where the ship was headed. But the governor of Satun Province in Thailand, Dechrat Simsiri, said the passengers wanted to go to Malaysia. “They didn’t want to come to Thailand because we are in the middle of a heavy crackdown on human traffickers and they knew they would be arrested and sent back to Myanmar,” Mr. Simsiri said.
Several passengers also told reporters on Thursday that they had boarded the boat three months ago in the hope of reaching Malaysia. But they said the Malaysian authorities turned away their boat on Wednesday.
Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim nation, has quietly admitted tens of thousands of Rohingya. But after more than 1,500 migrants came ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia in the past week, both countries declared their intention to turn away any more boats carrying migrants unless they were in jeopardy.
In a statement on Friday, Najib Razak, the prime minister of Malaysia, said his government was “taking the necessary actions to deal with this humanitarian crisis.”
The boat’s retreat from Thai waters underscored the complexity of the crisis, in which the perils of human trafficking are entwined with the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
Jeffrey Labovitz, head of Thailand operations for the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization that is helping the migrants, said that the Thai government offered to bring the boat ashore and allow people to disembark. But he said that individuals on the ship who identified themselves as representatives of the passengers told the authorities that they preferred to try again to reach Malaysia.
Thapanee Ietsrichai, a Thai reporter who witnessed the boat’s departure from Thai waters, confirmed that a man who was acting as the leader of the passengers and gave his name as Selim insisted to Thai sailors that they did not want to come ashore in Thailand and wanted to travel to Malaysia.
How Myanmar and Its Neighbors Are Responding to the Rohingya Crisis
Myanmar and its neighbors see the people of the Rohingya ethnic group and the seaborne trafficking of migrants in the region very differently, complicating the refugees’ plight.
But Ms. Thapanee added that women on board were weeping as the boat departed. “They did not appear to want to leave,” she wrote in an Instagram posting. She said she and the Thai sailors “could not hold back their tears” as the ship moved farther out to sea.
The green and red fishing boat, packed with men, women and children squatting on the deck, flew a tattered black flag on a makeshift bamboo mast with the words, in English, “We are Myanmar Rohingya.” Passengers said there were 400 migrants aboard the boat, which on Thursday was north of the Malaysian island of Langkawi and west of the Thai mainland. At least 160 people were visible above deck.
Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, which monitors trafficking in the Andaman Sea and had been in contact with a passenger on the boat with a mobile phone, said the boat appeared to have taken on the Rohingya passengers around March 1. She said other vessels linked to the traffickers delivered water and food to the boat during the voyage.
Passengers said that 10 people had died during the journey and that their bodies had been thrown overboard. But Ms. Lewa said passengers have given differing accounts of how many people died during the journey. “It’s always difficult to get the true story,” she said. “They are so traumatized.”
The boat’s location was unknown until Thursday. Ms. Lewa provided the mobile phone number of the passenger on the boat to The New York Times after he reported that the crew had abandoned them and requested help.
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