Rohingya migrants plead for rescue on stricken vessel: Activist

A child, believed to be Rohingya, eats inside a shelter after he was rescued along with hundreds of others on Sunday from boats in Lhoksukon, Indonesia's Aceh Province. -Reuters

Bangkok - Hundreds of starving migrants have pleaded for urgent rescue after they were abandoned by smugglers on a boat in waters believed to be near both Thailand and Malaysia, an activist said on Tuesday.

Their desperate appeal came as a distraught Rohingya man in the Malaysian capital said he had spoken to his wife who is also onboard a broken migrant boat with three of their children.

The Arakan Project, which monitors migrant journeys across the Bay of Bengal, said it had spoken by telephone to Rohingya migrants on board an abandoned vessel on Tuesday afternoon.

The boat, which is believed to be carrying around 350 people including dozens of women and children, was thought to be cast adrift by a Thai smuggling gang who fled the vessel after disabling the ship’s engine on Sunday.

“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 founder of the Arakan Project.

The migrants, she added, were unsure of their exact location and believed they were in waters close to Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia.

“But they say they can see the coastline, so we know they are close to the shore,” Lewa said.

The migrants were reached on a mobile phone with a Thai number and said there were 50 women and 84 children on board the vessel.

Malaysian Maritime police inspect one of the boats which carried illegal migrants in Langkawi. -AFP

Speaking from his tiny flat in Kuala Lumpur, the husband of another Rohingya migrant currently at sea said he had managed to briefly speak to his wife by phone onboard a stricken vessel.

“She said there is no food or water. If the children or babies cry, they wet their lips with some sea water,” Mohammed Hashim, who is in his early 40s, said, frequently breaking down in tears.

“She told me: ‘Please help or we will die’,” he added.

It is not clear if the boat is the same one contacted by the Arakan Project.

But according to Hashim’s account, it too was abandoned by people smugglers, had a broken engine and the migrants were reached on a Thai mobile.

The UN has led warnings that thousands of migrants are believed to be stranded at sea without food and water and could die unless Southeast Asian governments act urgently to rescue them.

The crisis comes as Thailand cracks down on the human-trafficking trade following the discovery of dozens of graves at remote jungle camps in the country’s south bordering Malaysia.

That has forced smugglers to change their routes and abandon their victims, campaigners say.

Despite the escalating alarm, Indonesia’s navy said it had turned away one boat carrying hundreds of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh to an uncertain fate.

Nearly 2,000 boatpeople from Myanmar and Bangladesh — including many ethnic Rohingya — have swum ashore, been rescued or intercepted off Malaysia and Indonesia in recent days, many of them thin, weak or in poor health after weeks at sea.

Thailand’s national police spokesman Prawut Thavornsiri said on Tuesday aviation police were using helicopters to scour the Andaman Sea for migrant boats.

Marine police were also patrolling the shore, he said, adding: “We have to close off the tap. We have to block them.”

He added that no new boats have been detected at the southern Thai entry points of Ranong and Satun, which are often used by traffickers, since the recent crackdown.