Over 790 boat people brought to Indonesia but more adrift off Thailand's coast
Nearly 800 “boat people” were brought ashore in Indonesia on Friday but other vessels crammed with migrants were sent back to sea despite a UN call to quickly rescue thousands set adrift in Southeast Asian waters.
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Nearly 800 “boat people” were brought ashore in Indonesia today but other vessels crammed with migrants were sent back to sea despite a UN call to quickly rescue thousands set adrift in Southeast Asian waters.
Smugglers have abandoned ships full of migrants, many of them hungry and sick, in the Andaman Sea following a Thai crackdown on human trafficking. Thailand is the first stop on the most common trafficking route used by criminals preying on Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis seeking to escape poverty.
“The latest information we have is about 794 people were found in the middle of the sea and brought ashore by fishermen at 5am on Friday morning,” Khairul Nova, a search and rescue official in Langsa, a town in the Indonesian province of Aceh, said by phone.
“They are now in a warehouse by the port as a temporary arrangement,” Nova added.