Fears up to 6,000 south-east Asian asylum seekers are abandoned at sea

International groups worry that boats will soon land with dead bodies on board as Rohingyas and Bangladeshis flee poverty and discrimination

A Rohingya boy waits with other migrants at a temporary detention centre in Langkawi on Tuesday. Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images

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As many as 6,000 migrants in south-east Asia may be trapped at sea in crowded, wooden boats, and activists warn of potentially dangerous conditions as food and clean water runs low.
Even though hundreds of migrants abandoned at sea by smugglers have reached land and relative safety in the past two days, thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Burma are believed still at risk.
Worried that boats will start washing to shore with dead bodies, the UN high commissioner for refugees, the US and several other governments and international organisations have held emergency meetings, but participants say there are no immediate plans to search for vessels in the busy Malacca Strait.
One of the concerns is what to do with the Rohingya if a rescue is launched.
The minority group is denied citizenship in Burma, and other countries have long worried that opening their doors to a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants.

Related: Burma census is not counting Rohingya Muslims, says UN agency

“These are people in desperate straits,” said Phil Robertson, of Human Rights Watch in Bangkok. He called on governments to band together to help those still stranded at sea, some for two months or longer. “Time is not on their side,” he said.
For decades the Rohingya have suffered state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Burma, which considers them illegal settlers from Bangladesh even though their families have lived there for generations.
In the past three years attacks on the religious minority, numbering about 1.3m, have left up to 280 people dead and forced 140,000 from their homes. They live in crowded camps just outside the Rakhine state capital, Sittwe, where they have little access to school or adequate health care.
The conditions at home – and lack of jobs – have sparked one of the biggest exoduses of boat people since the Vietnam war.
Chris Lewa, director of the non-profit Arakan project, which has been monitoring boat departures and arrivals for more than a decade, estimates more than 100,000 men, women and children have boarded ships since mid-2012.
Most are trying to reach Malaysia, but recent regional crackdowns on human trafficking networks have sent brokers and agents into hiding, making it impossible for migrants to disembark even after family members have paid $2,000 or more, she said.
Lewa believes up to 6,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis are still crowded on small and large boats in the Malacca Strait and nearby international waters.
With limited access to food and clean water, their health is deteriorating, she said, adding that dozens of deaths have been reported.
“I’m very concerned about smugglers abandoning boatloads at sea,” said Lewa.

Maritime police officers on a boat which arrived in Langkawi, Malaysia, on Tuesday. Photograph: Vincent Thian/AP

In the past two days, 1,600 Rohingya have washed to shore in two south-east Asian countries.
After four boats carrying nearly 600 people successfully landed in western Indonesia – some migrants jumped into the water and swam – a fifth carrying hundreds more was turned away early on Monday.
An Indonesian navy spokesman, Manahan Simorangkir, said they had been trying to get to Malaysia.
“We didn’t intend to prevent them from entering our territory, but because their destination country was not Indonesia, we asked them to continue to the country where they actually want to go,” he said.
Those who made it to shore aboard the other boats on Sunday were taken to a sports stadium in Lhoksukon, the capital of north Aceh district.
Some were given medical attention.
“We had nothing to eat,” said Rashid Ahmed, a 43-year-old Rohingya man. He said he had left Rakhine, in Burma, with his eldest son three months ago.
A Bangladeshi man, Mohamed Malik, said he felt uncertain about being stranded in Aceh, but also relieved. “Relieved to be here because we receive food, medicine. It’s altogether a relief,” the man said.
Late on Sunday night police found a big wooden ship trapped in shallow waters at a beach on Langkawi, an island off Malaysia, and have since found 865 men, 101 women and 52 children, said Jamil Ahmed, the area’s deputy police chief.
He said many appeared weak and thin and that at least two other boats had not been found.
“We believe there may be more boats coming,” Jamil said.

Boat people from Burma and Bangladesh collapsed in exhaustion at the Langkawi police station’s multi purpose hall in Langkawi on Monday. Photograph: Hamzah Osman/AP

Thailand has long been considered a regional hub for human traffickers.
The tactics of brokers and agents started changing in November as authorities began tightening security on land, a move apparently aimed at appeasing the US government as it prepared to release its annual Trafficking in Persons report in June. Last year, Thailand was downgraded to the lowest level, putting it on par with North Korea and Syria.
Rohingya packing into ships in the Bay of Bengal have been joined in growing numbers by Bangladeshis.
Until recently their first stop was Thailand, where they were held in open pens in jungle camps as brokers collected “ransoms” from relatives. Those who could pay continued on to Malaysia or other countries. Those who could not were sometimes beaten, killed or left to die.
Since 1 May, police have found two dozen bodies in shallow graves in the mountains of southern Thailand.
Thai authorities have since arrested dozens of people, including a powerful mayor and a man named Soe Naing, otherwise known as Anwar, who was accused of being one of the trafficking kingpins in southern Thailand. More than 50 police officers are also being investigated.
Spooked by the arrests, smugglers are abandoning ships, sometimes disappearing in speedboats, with rudimentary instructions about where to go.
Vivian Tan, the UN refugee agency’s regional press officer in Bangkok, said there was real sense of urgency from the international community.
“At this point, I’m not sure what the concrete next steps are or should be,” she said about meetings with diplomats and international organisations.