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Survivors relive ordeal of being set adrift by Thai military
Sydney Morning Herald - February 4, 2009
Tom Allard, Jakarta – Muslim Rohingya asylum seekers from Burma have detailed their harrowing ordeal after being rescued by the Indonesian Navy early yesterday, saying 20 of the 218 aboard their vessel died from starvation after being towed out to sea by the Thai military.
The asylum seekers have also relayed to Indonesian authorities that their rickety wooden boat was one of nine vessels towed out to sea, stripped of their engines and left to drift after making landfall on the west coast of Thailand about a month ago.
As many as 1800 Rohingya were set adrift with little food and water, twice the initial estimates, according to the account.
Thailand's alleged mistreatment of the asylum seekers has become an international scandal, despite qualified denials by the Thai Government of any wrongdoing on its part.
The boat was intercepted on Monday afternoon in the Strait of Malacca, 68 nautical miles from the east coast of Aceh, Indonesia's northernmost province on the tip of Sumatra.
"Their condition was very poor when we found them. They said they had run out of food," said Lieutenant Jul, an Indonesian navy spokesman posted in Banda Aceh. "They said originally they were about 220 but 20 died on the sea. The total of them now is 198 people. [They died] because of not enough food."
Some of the survivors bore scars that they alleged were caused by beatings from Thai security forces. All of them – men aged 13 to 50 – were very thin, and many had been treated in hospital after arriving in Aceh.
The boat was about 12 metres long and in extremely poor condition, held together by rope.
Lieutenant Jul told the Herald that the account of the journey had been provided by the only Malay speaker on board. Malay is similar to Bahasa Indonesia.
The man, 37, had told them that nine boats in all were taken out to sea by Thai authorities and their engines removed. Each boat had about 200 people on board. "They don't know where the other boats are," Lieutenant Jul said.
It appears that one of the boats had made landfall in Aceh last month while another was picked up by the Indian navy near the Andaman Islands. The fate of the other boats is unknown. Aid groups fear that hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned or starved.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority from the north-west Burmese province of Arakan and neighbouring Bangladesh. Many have fled Burma to Bangladesh where 28,000 have registered as refugees with the United Nations. Others pay people smugglers to transport them by boat from Burma to Malaysia along the Thai coastline.
The Thai foreign ministry did not return calls yesterday, but in a statement issued on January 23 it obliquely acknowledged the forced removal of the Rohingya asylum seekers back to sea.
Four days later, as international outrage mounted about the disabling of the Rohingya boats taken out to sea, it issued another news release with a denial of mistreatment.
"This must be categorically denied as having no place in policy and procedures," the statement said, adding that the military would be investigating the claims.
The Burmese military junta has flatly denied the Rohingya exist, while both Thailand and Indonesia have previously described them as "economic migrants" and vowed to return them to Burma.
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