Advertisement
Advertisement

Hundreds dead, set adrift by Thais

538 refugees cast out to sea missing or dead; desperate swim for land claims many. Thailand investigating handling of the boatpeople and its policy towards migrants

Hundreds of Myanmese and Bangladeshi refugees are dead after being towed out to sea by the Thai military and deliberately cast adrift in unpowered boats last month, investigations by the Sunday Morning Post have revealed.

A total of 538 people are missing or dead.

Our sources include Indian coastguard and security agency interviews with survivors, matching accounts by victims of shipwrecks hundreds of kilometres apart and interviews with individuals in Thailand who said they were involved in executing the secret expulsion policy against the Rohingya boatpeople. The Muslim Rohingya hail from an area along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.

One horrific incident is described in a transcript of survivor interrogations, obtained by the Post from Indian security officials in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It recounts how 300 people jumped off a barge that had drifted for days. Survivors described swimming through a sea of bodies as they tried to reach a nearby island. Only 11 swimmers survived.

In a statement to the Post yesterday, the Thai government confirmed that an investigation was under way into the handling of the Rohingyas and the wider policy on immigrants.

Thai officials were now 'investigating and verifying all the facts and surrounding circumstances' following recent news reports, the statement said. 'Because of the increasing urgency of this issue and the increasing size of the problem, we will co-ordinate closely with the countries concerned.'

The statement did not specifically address claims that the Thai military had abandoned refugees at sea.

According to the Indian interrogation transcripts, a boatload of more than 400 people had been towed out to sea by Thai military personnel on December 17 or 18. 'They were provided with two sacks of boiled rice and two gallons of water ... six persons died due to starvation and suffocation,' the report said.

It also includes the allegation that four refugees were shot dead by the Thai military during the process of loading the barge and that a teenager was thrown into the sea with his hands tied. It was not possible to substantiate those claims.

An earlier Associated Press report cited unidentified officials who spoke to the survivors as saying the group numbered 412.

The circumstances described in the transcript and news reports match those provided by a source in Thailand who told the Post more than a week ago that a group of 412 refugees had been towed out to sea and abandoned by the Thai army on December 18. The 103 survivors of the deadly voyage were rescued by the Indian coastguard on December 27.

In another incident, survivors of three shipwrecks - two in the Andamans and the other off Indonesia's Aceh province - gave matching accounts of being captured by the Thai military, then abandoned at sea.

The Indian Navy rescued about 150 shipwreck survivors from Tilangchang Island in the Andamans on January 10. Twenty died on the boat or after reaching the island, the survivors said.

'[They] say they were put in four boats without engines by the Thai authorities,' a security official in the Andaman and Nicobar capital, Port Blair, told the Post.

Coastguard Commandant Kailash Negi said: 'They appear to have been through the same ordeal as a lot of other boatpeople ... they said their engine-less boats got wrecked.'

Officials said the refugees were part of a larger group, but did not give a number. However the Andaman Chronicle website reported on January 12 that the survivors claimed to have been among a group of 580 when they set out from Bangladesh.

More than 700km away, the Indonesian Navy picked up 192 shipwreck victims near Aceh's Rondo Island on January 7. The official Antara news agency quoted a naval base commander, Colonel Yanuwar, as saying that the group had drifted for 28 days.

In an interview published in the Jakarta Post on January 10, one of the survivors, Imam Husein, 30, was quoted as saying: 'We were in Thailand for two days, but they abused us and expelled us with gunshots.'

He, too, described a group numbering 580, who were divided into three boats by Thai 'marines', towed into international waters and abandoned.

The remaining boat or boats, presumably with 218 people aboard, are still missing 38 days after they were cast adrift on or about December 11.

The survivors from the incidents in the Andamans have been under police detention the entire time and are not being allowed visitors. The Jakarta Post interview was said to have been conducted in person at Imam Husein's hospital bedside.

The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that the Thai army had instituted a policy of hiding refugees on an island before setting them adrift in international waters.

Additional reporting by Greg Torode, chief Asia correspondent

Original reporting by Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian

 

 

Post