A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels yesterday, the latest round of “maritime ping-pong” by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
The United Nations has called on countries around the Andaman Sea not to push back the thousands of desperate Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims and to rescue them instead.
Washington raised pressure on Southeast Asia to open its ports to boat people yesterday after migrants’ shunned vessel sank off Indonesia.
The US State Department said John Kerry had phoned his Thai counterpart “to discuss the situation of migrants in the Andaman Sea and to discuss the possibility of Thailand providing temporary shelter for them.”
A clampdown by Thailand’s military junta has made a well-trodden trafficking route into Malaysia too risky for criminals who prey on Rohingya fleeing persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and on impoverished Bangladeshis looking for work.
A Reuters journalist on a speedboat taken from southern Thailand’s coast said people aboard had little shelter from the blazing sun.
The International Organization for Migration criticised Southeast Asian governments for playing “maritime ping-pong” with the migrants and endangering their lives.