Thousands of migrants feared adrift at sea as South East Asia urged to do more

It comes as Malaysia announced it will send away migrant ships unless they were sinking.

LANGKAWI, MALAYSIA // A crisis involving boatloads of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants stranded at sea deepened on Tuesday as Malaysia said it would turn away any more of the crowded, wooden vessels unless they were sinking.

Thousands of migrants are believed to be stranded at sea without food and water, and could die unless South East Asian governments act urgently to rescue them, migrant groups and the UN warned on Tuesday.

Thailand said it would host a summit on May 29 to address “the unprecedented increase” in trafficking, as Indonesia’s navy said it had turned away one boat carrying hundreds of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Underscoring the concern, the International Organisation for Migration said a vessel was adrift somewhere near the Thai or Malaysian coast with around 350 people – including women and children – with no food or water.

IOM said search-and-rescue operations were urgently needed.

“It needs a regional effort... we don’t have the capacity to search for them, but governments do,” said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the IOM, a 157-member-state intergovernmental organisation.

Malaysia’s marine northern commander Tan Kok Kwee said on Tuesday, “We won’t let any foreign boats come in.”

If the boats are seaworthy, he said the navy would “give them provisions and send them away”. He said they would carry out a rescue only if the boat was sinking.

Indonesia’s navy turned away a vessel that approached its northwestern Aceh region on Monday carrying an estimated 400 migrants, naval spokesman Manahan Simorangkir said.

The ship was given fuel and towed out to international waters, he said.

Nearly 2,000 boatpeople from the two impoverished nations – many of them members of Myanmar’s oppressed Rohingya minority – have swum ashore, been rescued or intercepted off Malaysia and Indonesia in recent days.

Many of them were thin, weak or in poor health after weeks at sea.

The Arakan Project, a group advocating for the rights of Muslim Rohingya said as many as 8,000 other people may be adrift. The group said it had spoken by phone with passengers aboard the vessel carrying 350 people, who said they were abandoned by their Thai human-traffickers.

“They told us they have had no food and water for the last three days. They have called for urgent rescue,” said Chris Lewa, the group’s founder.

Ali Hussein, a 31-year-old Rohingya from Myanmar, is among more than 1,000 people who swam ashore in Malaysia from their smuggling ships Sunday and Monday.

Like thousands from the Rohingya community, he was “running for my life” from sectarian violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

He and about 800 other people endured 43 days on an overcrowded vessel bound for Thailand as meagre food and water supplies dwindled to nothing.

The ship diverted to Malaysia’s Langkawi island where the hungry passengers leapt into the sea in a desperate attempt to swim to safety.

“There was no more food or water so we just jumped out of the boat,” he said.

Rohingya survivors of the route previously spoke of harrowing sea passages in which passengers died of hunger or sickness or were beaten to death by smugglers, their bodies tossed overboard.

People-smugglers are believed to be abandoning their human cargoes after being diverted from Thailand – a key stop on illicit migration routes – where authorities have cracked down on the trade.

Thailand launched its crackdown after discovering dozens of migrant corpses in secret jungle camps earlier this month.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says 25,000 people are believed to have embarked on the South East Asian route from January to March, double the previous year’s pace, and that an estimated 300 had died.* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse