Associated Press A mystery object from space is to whiz close by Earth today. It will not hit the planet, but scientists are stumped by what exactly it is. Astronomers say it might be space junk or it could be a tiny asteroid, too small to cause damage even if it hit.

WE HOPE that the mysterious object hurtling through space towards Earth today contains a message from a superior alien race, explaining how to solve the refugee issue.

None of those here on Earth, not the Nobel prize-winners or the generals running Burma, seem to have much of a clue. And the problem is, we are all less than free beings until we do.

Almost precisely one year ago, reporters from Phuketwan discovered the island off the Andaman coast where would-be refugee Rohingya boatpeople were held before being ''pushed back'' from Thailand.

Cut adrift on boats without motors, hundreds drowned as a direct result of this inhumane policy.

In reporting the Thai Army's callous activities, we held the vague hope that change might come. It has, but in ways that may yet prove to be inconsequential.

Members of the human race do not yet know how to deal with each other in ways that transcend the porous and often rather pathetic boundaries that nations draw.

To our enduring shame, the first Rohingya arrivals to avoid the pushbacks suffered a fate that was almost as bad as being cut adrift.

They were incarcerated in Thailand in rooms where they had no access to exercise or sunshine so that, after six months, some of them could barely stand or walk.

Two once-healthy teenage boys died in custody, and more would probably have followed had the boatload not been transferred to a better detention centre.

Yet for months, whenever Phuketwan inquired about the health of these people, Immigration officers told us they were well-fed and content.

There are officials who tell lies for a living all along the Andaman Sea coast, in Thailand and in Burma, in Bangladesh and in Malaysia, officials who do not want the truth to be known about the Rohingya or other oppressed migrant groups.

While media exposure of the pushbacks may have halted the then-secret policy, (we still cannot know for certain) it also achieved what the Thai Army wanted.

We've been told that would-be refugees now try to reach Malaysia by land, or even take advantage of the spread of budget airlines and fly, using fake papers.

Some may be considering sea voyages but waiting to see what happens to the boatload still being held in Bangkok, one year on.

If that group is held indefinitely . . . then that will also help to achieve what the Thai Army wants, a cessation of illegal migration by sea.

Outside of Thailand, a newly-released report by the Equal Rights Trust has called on Malaysia to grant legal residency to some 25,000 or more Rohingya living there.

The report details the cycle of abuse suffered by Rohingya as they are parlayed from officials to people-traffickers, from detention camps to different forms of slavery.

Fortunately, condemnation by the US State Department has helped to perhaps bring the beginings of change in Malaysia.

The use of the rattan cane to routinely and savagely lash male illegal migrants may be at an end. Other obscene horrors continue to be a part of the process that, along with scarring the victims, dehumanises the rest of us.

We have some sympathy for the nations of the region in that there are no easy solutions, but there are right principles and wrong principles.

Perhaps the message from the superior aliens will tell us what some already know yet ignore: the greed that festers and feeds human trafficking has to be stopped first.

For lack of a positive conclusion to the Rohingya saga and therefore this article, here from the ERT report is an account of the treatment of some boatpeople.

Stripped of birthplace and happenstance, we all remain adrift on the same planet:

''Men and boys who are unable to meet the demands of the traffickers are sold to other brokers in Thailand as bonded labor to work on fishing boats and in plantations. Women have reportedly been sold to brothels or into domestic servitude. One elderly Rohingya woman who had been deported to the Thai border and could not pay the ransom had been forced to beg for six months in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, before being released.The trafficked deportees who are sold to fishing trawlers are forced to work in slave-like conditions with little or no sleep; casting and mending nets and sorting fish. They are at times drugged with methamphetamines and medical care onboard is non-existent. When they fall sick, they are sometimes thrown overboard. Murder is not uncommon. These long-haul fishing trawlers go out to the high seas for periods of up to two years, without coming back to shore. They are serviced by supply boats which provide fuel, food and new crews, and collect the catch on a regular basis. The Thai ports of Pattani and Songkhla are reportedly the main hubs for recruitment in southern Thailand, where trafficking gangs on the border sell persons from Myanmar including Rohingya deported from Malaysia. Jumping ship is often the only way to escape, but there is a risk of falling back into the hands of traffickers.''