Rohingya boat arrives at Thailand

Reuters . Bangkok | Update: 15:45, Apr 02, 2018

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A boat with Rohingya refugees restocked with essential supplies at an island in southern Thailand on Sunday, authorities said, amid signs that overcrowding in Bangladeshi camps could prompt many others to make similarly perilous sea crossings.

Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed the border from Myanmar's Rakhine State into Bangladesh after militant attacks in August sparked a military crackdown that United Nations and Western countries have said constitutes ethnic cleansing.

The boat, carrying 56 refugees, stopped on Lanta island in southern Krabi province after a heavy storm on Saturday evening. It was the first Rohingya vessel spotted off Thailand in more than a year, local police said.

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"We treated them with humanitarian consideration and allowed them to return to sea because they told us they were heading to Malaysia," Lanta police chief, Police Colonel M.L. Pattanajak Chakrabandhu told Reuters. Locals gave the refugees food and water, he said.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya fled by sea following an outbreak of sectarian violence in Rakhine State in 2012, some falling prey to human traffickers.

That exodus peaked in 2015, when an estimated 25,000 people fled across the Andaman Sea for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Rights groups expect another surge in Rohingya boats reaching Southeast Asia, even if not at the levels of the past.

"We have received credible information about boats full of Rohingya refugees making their way to Malaysia over the last few months," Matthew Smith co-founder of advocacy group Fortify Rights told Reuters. "The humanitarian situation in Bangladesh for the refugees is very difficult."


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The plight of the Rohingya

7 April 2018

Graeme Acton, Foreign News Editor@worldwatchrnz [email protected]

Analysis - A small boat of 56 Rohingya men, women and children from Myanmar's restive Rakhine state has arrived in Malaysian waters, a few days after it came ashore on the Thai island of Koh Lanta, south of the tourist hotspot Phuket.

https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/...jpg?1523005022Photo: AFP PHOTO / Phyo Hein KYAW

There, they were given food, water and supplies by community groups and their boat was repaired before they were pushed back out into the Andaman Sea by Thai authorities.

Malaysian police have now placed the refugees in an immigration detention centre, after they were found, adrift and exhausted, off the northwest coast of Malaysia.

Malaysia has already accepted over 100,000 Rohingya, most of them undocumented refugees, who struggle to access basic public services.

They are just a small drop in the wave of humanity that has crossed the Myanmar border into Bangladesh in the last year, as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled a violent crackdown by the Burmese military, the Tatmadaw.
Thailand and Malaysia moved over the last two years to break up major people-trafficking rings who were organising boats to bring Rohingya south from Rakhine.

Almost 100,000 fled on boats between 2014 and 2015, and it is estimated at least 1000 died during dangerous voyages on rickety vessels. Human misery had become a lucrative trade.

While Myanmar and Bangladesh have now reached a tentative agreement on repatriation of refugees, most analysts and rights groups say the process has a long, long way to run.

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For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), heading off another boat crisis has been a top priority.
As the monsoon season looms, those in the heaving camps inside Bangladesh, and in Rakhine State, know that in a few short weeks the rains will make an already desperate situation even worse.

Water levels will rise in many areas by several feet. The already overcrowded and squalid camps - conditions that aid agencies are struggling to address - will be at serious risk of flooding and landslides, water-borne disease, and possible outbreaks of illnesses like cholera.

The urgency to leave, to escape the camps, will rise. With it will likely come the return of the boats and a heightened pressure on border authorities in Bangladesh and Myanmar to prevent the Rohingya problem being exported to other parts of the region.

ASEAN leaders know action is needed now more than ever to break through the political and diplomatic impediments to a workable permanent solution - which must be the organised repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar.

The monsoon won't wait, and neither will the boats.

The plight of the Rohingya | Radio New Zealand News

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