More than 800 migrants have landed on the shores of Indonesia and Thailand after being adrift at sea for weeks, authorities said Friday. They are among the few who have successfully sneaked past a wall of resistance mounted by Southeast Asian countries who have made it clear the boat people are not welcome, reports the Associated Press. Several thousand refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar – fleeing either poverty or persecution – are believed to be adrift on boats in the Andaman Sea in what has become a spiraling humanitarian crisis. In recent days, about 2,000 landed in Malaysia and Indonesia, but both countries then said they could not accept any more. Fisherman, however, towed two boats to Indonesia’s eastern Aceh province early Friday – one with nearly 700 people and another carrying 47, police said. The larger boat was on the verge of sinking when fisherman brought it to the fishing village of Lagsa, according to Lot. Col Sunarya, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. He said everyone aboard was weak from hunger and dehydrated. “Some of the people told police they were abandoned at sea for days and Malaysian authorities had already turned their boat away,” Sunarya said. About 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Langsa, fisherman rescued the smaller boat carrying 47 Rohingya migrants, also dehydrated and hungry, said Aceh Tamiang police chief Dicky Sandoni. They were brought to a beach at Kuala Seruway village in Aceh’s Tamiang district. Separately, the Thai Navy found a group of 106 people, mostly men but including 15 women and two children, on a small island off the coast of Phang Nga province, an area known for its world-class scuba diving. The plight of Myanmar’s 1.3 million Rohingya has worsened recently and in the last three years more than 120,000 members of the Muslim minority, who are intensely persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, have boarded ships to flee to other countries, paying huge sums to human traffickers. But faced with a regional crackdown on human trafficking, some captains and smugglers have abandoned their ships, leaving an estimated 6,000 refugees to fend for themselves, according to aid workers and human rights groups. –Dhaka, May 15 (UNB)
