Malaysia turns away 800 migrants in two boats while Thailand tracks third

Rohingya and Bangladeshis migrants abandoned at sea by human traffickers had nowhere to go Thursday as Malaysia turned away two crammed boats, and Thailand kept at bay a large vessel with hundreds of hungry people.

"What do you expect us to do?" Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Jafaar said. "We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border. We have treated them humanely but they cannot be flooding our shores like this."

"We have to send the right message that they are not welcome here," he told The Associated Press. Four days earlier, about 1,000 refugees landed on the shores of Langkawi, a resort island in northern Malaysia near Thailand. Another 600 have arrived surreptitiously in Indonesia.

Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha also made it clear that his government does not have resources to host refugees.

"If we take them all in, then anyone who wants to come will come freely. I am asking if Thailand will be able to take care of them all. Where will the budget come from?" Prayuth said. "No one wants them. Everyone wants a transit country like us to take responsibility. Is it fair?" he said.

Southeast Asia for years tried to quietly ignore the plight of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya but finds itself caught in a spiraling humanitarian crisis that in many ways it helped create. In the last three years, more than 120,000 members of the Muslim minority, who are intensely persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, have boarded ships to flee to other countries, paying huge sums to human traffickers.

But faced with a regional crackdown, the smugglers have abandoned the ships, leaving an estimated 6,000 refugees to fend for themselves, according to reliable aid workers and human rights groups.

"This is a grave humanitarian crisis demanding an immediate response," said Matthew Smith, executive director of nonprofit human rights group Fortify Rights. "Lives are on the line."

Despite appeals by the United Nations and aid groups, no government in the region — Thai, Indonesian or Malaysian — appears willing to take the refugees, fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants.

Wan Junaidi said about 500 people on a boat found Wednesday off northern Penang state were given provisions and sent on their way. Another boat carrying about 300 migrants was turned away near Langkawi island overnight, according to two Malaysian officials who declined to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak to the press.

Meanwhile, a boat carrying 300 Rohingya was spotted at the Thai-Malaysian maritime border in Satun province, Thailand's deputy government spokesman Maj. Gen. Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

The Thai navy contacted the migrants, who said they "wanted to travel to a third country and asked for help in repairing their boat and asked for food and water," Sansern said.

"None of them wanted to go to the Thai shore but wanted to travel to a third country," he said. "Thai sailors have given them what they wanted by providing food and water for them. Currently, they are in the process of repairing the broken engine." The repairs will finish tonight, he said.

Malaysia, which is not a signatory of international conventions on refugees, is host to more than 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers, the majority of whom are from Myanmar. More than 45,000 of them are Rohingya, according to the UN refugee agency, many more than almost any other country.

But because they have no legal status, job opportunities are limited. They also have little or no access to basic services like education and health care, and are vulnerable to arrests and deportation. A small number are resettled to third countries.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch Asia accused Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia of playing "a three-way game of human ping pong." At the same time, the three countries and others in Southeast Asia have for years bowed to the wishes of Myanmar at regional conferences, avoiding all discussions of state-sponsored discrimination against the Rohingya.

Denied citizenship by national law, members of the Rohingya minority are effectively stateless. They have limited access to education or adequate health care and cannot move around freely. They have been attacked by the military and chased from their homes and land by extremist Buddhist mobs in a country that regards them as illegal settlers.

Wan Junaidi, the deputy home minister, said it was time to put pressure on Myanmar to address the Rohingya crisis.

"You talk about democracy, but don't treat your citizens like trash, like criminals, until they need to run away to our country," he said.

Increasingly over the years, Rohingya boarding boats in the Bay of Bengal have been joined by Bangladeshis seeking an escape from poverty.

Their first stop until recently was Thailand, where migrants were held in jungle camps until their families could raise hefty ransoms so they could continue onward. The smugglers changed tactics after recent crackdowns and began holding people on large ships offshore.

Initially migrants were shuttled to shore in groups on smaller boats after their "ransoms" were paid. But as agents and brokers on land got spooked by arrests — not just of traffickers but also police and politicians — they went into hiding.

That created a bottleneck, with migrants stuck on boats for days and weeks.