PATTANI, Southern Thailand: Survivors of a boat that sank off Indonesia have described a bloody struggle for dwindling supplies of food on board, as thousands of illegal economic migrants and asylum-seekers remain perilously adrift at sea in the Malacca Strait and Andaman Sea.
People were thrown overboard as Rohingya and Bangladeshis fought for their survival, according to accounts of one of the grimmest episodes to emerge in a spiralling humanitarian disaster in south-east Asian waters.
"They were killing each other, throwing people overboard," said Sunarya, a police chief on the Indonesian island of Sumatra where around 900 people were rescued on Friday.
Mahmud Rafiq, a 21-year-old Rohingya man who left Myanmar a month ago, said people on board the boat agreed to leave the little food that was left to women and children.
"They then started hitting us. They took the food," Rafiq said.
"They pushed many of us overboard. They beat us and attacked us with knives," he said. "I was hit with a wooden plank on the head and on my legs."
Another survivor, Muhammad Koyes, said before the boat sank it had been turned away by both Indonesia and Malaysia in a round of maritime "ping pong" that has been criticised by the United Nations, the United States and other countries.
Photographs and video of people stranded at sea show distressed and emaciated men, women and children, many of them reportedly in need of medical treatment.
The UN has appealed for regional nations to launch urgent rescue operations to bring the boats ashore.
"We're not seeing any such moves from any governments in the region even though we're calling on the international community to take action because people are dying," said Jeffrey Savage from the UN refugee agency.
The crisis unfolded last month when Thailand began cracking down on human trafficking networks backed by powerful political figures, local officials and police after the discovery of mass graves and smuggler camps in remote areas near the Thailand and Malaysian borders.
The crackdown prompted traffickers to abandon asylum-seekers who had made the dangerous journey across the Bay of Bengal from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The crisis has shattered the notion of co-operation within the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations as Thailand and Malaysia urged Myanmar, the country also called Burma, to act to stop a mass exodus of Rohingya from its western Arakan State.
More than 25,000 people attempted the journey in the first three months of this year with an estimated 300 dying from starvation, disease or beatings by boat crew and people smugglers.
However Myanmar has rejected a call to attend a Thai hosted regional summit on May 29 to discuss the crisis.
Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak on Saturday said he would seek help from Myanmar to help address what he called a "humanitarian catastrophe".
"I hope they will give a positive response as the refugees are due to internal problems that we cannot interfere with, but we want to do something before it gets worse," he said.
For years Malaysia turned a blind eye to the arrival on its shores through human trafficking networks of tens of thousands of Rohingya who provided cheap labour and lived quietly among Malaysians.
But since the Thai crackdown Malaysia has declared Rohingya unwelcome and pushed boats back out to sea.
The UN and refugee advocates estimate there could be as many as 8,000 people still stranded on overcrowded boats while more than 2,000 have managed to come ashore in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in recent weeks.
The US State Department said Secretary of State John Kerry has phoned his Thai counterpart to "discuss the possibility of Thailand providing temporary accommodation for them".
But Thailand's military leaders have said they could not host camps without help from other countries and international agencies.
They also said they are worried that establishing camps could provoke a wave of new arrivals from Myanmar, where 1.3 million Rohingya are effectively stateless, refused citizenship and basic rightsalthough Rohingya have lived in the country for generations.
They have often been the target of Buddhist mobs and tens of thousands live in squalid camps.
The Bangladeshis are believed to be mainly illegal economic migrants.
People were thrown overboard as Rohingya and Bangladeshis fought for their survival, according to accounts of one of the grimmest episodes to emerge in a spiralling humanitarian disaster in south-east Asian waters.
"They were killing each other, throwing people overboard," said Sunarya, a police chief on the Indonesian island of Sumatra where around 900 people were rescued on Friday.
Mahmud Rafiq, a 21-year-old Rohingya man who left Myanmar a month ago, said people on board the boat agreed to leave the little food that was left to women and children.
"They then started hitting us. They took the food," Rafiq said.
"They pushed many of us overboard. They beat us and attacked us with knives," he said. "I was hit with a wooden plank on the head and on my legs."
Another survivor, Muhammad Koyes, said before the boat sank it had been turned away by both Indonesia and Malaysia in a round of maritime "ping pong" that has been criticised by the United Nations, the United States and other countries.
Photographs and video of people stranded at sea show distressed and emaciated men, women and children, many of them reportedly in need of medical treatment.
The UN has appealed for regional nations to launch urgent rescue operations to bring the boats ashore.
"We're not seeing any such moves from any governments in the region even though we're calling on the international community to take action because people are dying," said Jeffrey Savage from the UN refugee agency.
The crisis unfolded last month when Thailand began cracking down on human trafficking networks backed by powerful political figures, local officials and police after the discovery of mass graves and smuggler camps in remote areas near the Thailand and Malaysian borders.
The crackdown prompted traffickers to abandon asylum-seekers who had made the dangerous journey across the Bay of Bengal from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The crisis has shattered the notion of co-operation within the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations as Thailand and Malaysia urged Myanmar, the country also called Burma, to act to stop a mass exodus of Rohingya from its western Arakan State.
More than 25,000 people attempted the journey in the first three months of this year with an estimated 300 dying from starvation, disease or beatings by boat crew and people smugglers.
However Myanmar has rejected a call to attend a Thai hosted regional summit on May 29 to discuss the crisis.
Malaysia's prime minister Najib Razak on Saturday said he would seek help from Myanmar to help address what he called a "humanitarian catastrophe".
"I hope they will give a positive response as the refugees are due to internal problems that we cannot interfere with, but we want to do something before it gets worse," he said.
For years Malaysia turned a blind eye to the arrival on its shores through human trafficking networks of tens of thousands of Rohingya who provided cheap labour and lived quietly among Malaysians.
But since the Thai crackdown Malaysia has declared Rohingya unwelcome and pushed boats back out to sea.
The UN and refugee advocates estimate there could be as many as 8,000 people still stranded on overcrowded boats while more than 2,000 have managed to come ashore in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in recent weeks.
The US State Department said Secretary of State John Kerry has phoned his Thai counterpart to "discuss the possibility of Thailand providing temporary accommodation for them".
But Thailand's military leaders have said they could not host camps without help from other countries and international agencies.
They also said they are worried that establishing camps could provoke a wave of new arrivals from Myanmar, where 1.3 million Rohingya are effectively stateless, refused citizenship and basic rightsalthough Rohingya have lived in the country for generations.
They have often been the target of Buddhist mobs and tens of thousands live in squalid camps.
The Bangladeshis are believed to be mainly illegal economic migrants.
Both Thailand and Malaysia are more than happy to exploit undocumented migrants in virtual slavery but this episode also makes it crystal clear neither nation gives a damn about what happens to these people.
To claim Thailand is just a transit nation is total rubbish. Even according to the official Thai government statistics they estimate there are over 2 million undocumented migrant workers in Thailand.
Even worse, there is no public outcry in either nation to step in and help these people. On the contrary - all we read is "not in my back yard" while their Burmese "helpers" toil away in their garden.
Posted by Herbert on May 17, 2015 10:52