PHUKET: Two more boats laden with would-be
refugees are at sea off the Phuket-Andaman coast, sources say, as the tourism
high season merges with the safe ''sailing season'' for boatpeople.
The new sightings bring to five the number of
Rohingya vessels spotted or intercepted off Thailand's coast in the past two
weeks, an indication that informed sources are correct in predicting that
scores of boats are likely to sail as tranquil seasonal conditions set in.
The sequence of sailings is likely to focus
international attention again on the plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority
group deprived of citizenship and all other basic human rights in Burma.
''These people are prepared to risk their
lives in long, perilous sea voyages because conditions are so bad where they
live in Burma's north, or across the border as outcasts in Bangladesh,'' a
source who did not wish to be named told Phuketwan.
The epic flight from persecution under Burma's
rulers comes as the military junta and a newly elected Parliament seek the
country's controversial ascension to the chair of the important regional Asean
group in 2014.
The word ''Rohingya'' appears to be seldom
used in communications among Asean countries and neighbors, including India.
These days, the boatpeople constantly face additional hardships if they declare
their ethnicity in all countries in which they are forced ashore.
Phuketwan has been told but has yet to
independently confirm that two of the five recent boats that set sail from
northern Burma or Bangladesh have now landed in Malaysia.
It is believed that one boat, containing 70
men and boys, sailed on October 24. The second boat, which sailed on October
25, had 79 people on board. The whereabouts of a third boat, which sailed on
October 16, is not known.
All three boats were intercepted by Royal Thai
Navy vessels off the Andaman coast around Phuket and ''helped on.''
This is the phrase used to describe the policy
that superceded the notorious ''push-backs'' of the 2008-2009 sailing season,
when the Thai military and paramilitaries towed Rohingya out to sea and cut
them adrift in international waters.
Several hundred men and boys are believed to
have perished before survivors reached Indonesia or India's Andaman and Nicobar
Islands. ''Pushbacks'' ceased once the secret policy was exposed by Phuketwan
journalists and the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong.
The Royal Thai Navy now ''helps on'' would-be
refugees by intrercepting boats at sea and providing food, fuel and medical
attention if required so the Rohingya can sail on to their preferred
destination, which is often Malaysia.
While the interception of three boats can be
confirmed, it is not known whether the two freshly-sighted boats have been
apprehended and ''helped on.'' The vessels are believed to have sailed on
November 4 and November 5.
People smugglers - described appropriately in
Hong Kong parlance as ''snakeheads'' - have been selling tickets on an
increasing number of vessels this sailing season as the Rohingya perceive no
change in their tormented lives.
Mostly, the vessels are rickety and have no
navigation equipment so the men and boys are forced to hug the coast, only
coming ashore when they run out of food and water.
In many cases, they do not know whether they
are landing in Thailand or Malaysia. Culturally, the Rohingya protect their
womenfolk and would never consider putting their lives at risk.
A boatload of almost 70 men and boys that
landed on a small beach on Phuket alongside a five-star resort in January
highlighted the remarkable incongruity of the world's most deprived ethnic
group fetching up in a holiday haven for the world's rich.
Subsisting on a few handfuls of reconstituted
rice each day, the Rohingya seek salvation by plying the same waters as
speedboats ferrying snorkelling day-trippers, game fishing boats and divers
leading the good life on ''live-aboard'' adventures.
Shocking photographs published in 2009 showed
the contrast when tourists, frolicking in the Similan islands off Phuket, took
snapshots of apprehended Rohingya, emaciated and burned almost black, laid out
in rows on sand under the gun at the other end of the beach.
It was the large number of close to 5000
Rohingya who stumbled ashore in Thailand in 2007-2008 that led to the Thai
government of the time formulating the reprehensible ''pushbacks'' policy.
Yet for Thailand and all the nations of the region,
the issue of what to do with the boatpeople is not likely to vanish at sea
anytime soon.
Rohingya pose an uneasy Asean quandary because
the new and supposedly benign rulers of Burma still refuse to accept the
Rohingya as citizens,although they have made the Arakan region their home for
as long as 400 years.
Even the BBC was recently embroiled in
controversy over a year-old map depicting the Rohingya as being one of the many
ethnic communities that constitute 21st century Burma.
While some tribes are accepted, Burma shows no
sign of budging. Not one of the supposedly more compassionate and
better-informed countries in Asean speaks out.
So in increasing numbers now, the boats will
come. Desperation will continue to force the Rohingya, blanked out of the
region's collective memory, to sail across the waters off Phuket and its
other-world to their uncharted fate.
Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian
Business & Investment Opportunities
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