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Four boats carrying some 1,400 Rohingya migrants were rescued off the coasts of Indonesia and Malaysia today, a day after nearly 600 others arrived in a wooden vessel off Indonesia’s Aceh.
All the boats appear to have been abandoned as Thailand, their usual destination, cracks down on the trafficking of ethnic Rohingya Muslims bound for neighbouring countries, after the discovery of dozens of remains in mass graves at “slave camps” in Thailand’s south.

More than 1,000 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar landed in Malaysia after being dumped by human traffickers in shallow waters off the resort island of Langkawi, police said.
In the early hours today, Indonesian search and rescue teams discovered another boat drifting off east Aceh with 400 men, women and children from Myanmar and Bangladesh aboard, Aceh provincial search and rescue chief Budiawan said.
At about the same time a total of 1,018 landed in three boats on the northern resort island of Langkawi in Malaysia.
Langkawi island deputy police chief Jamil Ahmed said the group picked up Sunday comprised 865 men, 52 children and 101 women.
Police found a big wooden boat trapped in the sand in shallow waters at a beach in Langkawi, capable of holding 350 people, he said. This meant there were at least two other boats but they have not been located yet, he said.
Jamil said a Bangladeshi man told police that the boat handlers gave them directions on where to go once they reached the Malaysian shores, and escaped in other boats. The migrant said they have not eaten for three days, Jamil said, adding that most of them were weak and thin.
“We believe there may be more boats coming,” Jamil said.
In Indonesia, authorities have recruited fishermen to assist in patrolling the coast of the remote western province of Aceh.
When the four ships neared Indonesia’s shores early yesterday, some passengers jumped into the water and swam, said Steve Hamilton, of the International Organisation for Migration in Jakarta.
Indonesian officials said this group were tricked and told to swim to land. “One of the migrants who could speak Malay told me that their agent had told them they were in Malaysia, and to swim to shore,” Darsa, a disaster management agency official who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
They have been taken to a sports stadium in Lhoksukon, the capital of North Aceh District, to be cared for and questioned, said Lieutenant Colonel Achmadi, chief of police in the area, who uses only one name. Immigration authorities are beginning to process their cases.
Sick and weak after more than two months at sea, some were getting medical attention.
“We had nothing to eat,” said Rashid Ahmed, a 43-year-old Rohingya man who was on one of the boats. He said he left Myanmar’s troubled state of Rakhine with his eldest son three months ago.
The Rohingyas, who are Muslim, have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which considers them illegal settlers from Bangladesh. Attacks on the Rohingyas by Buddhist mobs in the last three years have sparked an exodus to nearby countries.
Thousands have braved the dangerous sea crossing from Myanmar to southern Thailand and beyond in the hope of reaching mainly Muslim Malaysia, but many often fall prey to people-traffickers in Thailand.

Chris Lewa from The Arakan Project, a Rohingya rights group, said she believes thousands of migrants are trapped at sea following crackdowns on trafficking in Thailand as well as in Malaysia in recent months.
“Thailand has tried to prevent traffickers from continuing their business ... so that has forced them to go somewhere else,” she said. “Brokers have been using ships as a camp.
“They’re just trying to disembark before they die,” she said of migrants perishing on boats without food, adding she expected many more to appear on Indonesian shores.
An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 people are now being held in large and small ships in the Malacca Strait and nearby international waters, said Lewa, whose group has monitored the movements of Rohingya for more than a decade. She added that crackdowns on trafficking syndicates in Thailand and Malaysia have prevented brokers from bringing them to shore.
Some are held even after family members pay for them to be released from the boats.
Up until recently, their first stop was Thailand, where they were held in open pens in jungle camps as brokers collected “ransoms” of US$2,000 or more from family and friends. Those who could pay continued onward, usually to Malaysia or other countries. Those who couldn’t were sometimes beaten, killed or left to die.
Since May 1, police have unearthed two dozen bodies from shallow graves in the mountains of southern Thailand, the apparent victims, they say, of smuggling rings.
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 under investigation.
With additional reporting from Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur


Thousands of Rohingya migrants rescued from ‘prison boats’ off Indonesia, Malaysia

Migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh are held at a police station in Kuah, Langkawi, Malaysia. Photo: EPA

Indonesian Rescue Team members distribute food to migrants believed to be Rohingya inside a shelter after they were rescued from boats off Indonesia's Aceh province. Photo: Reuters

 Rohingya refugee carries a fellow refugee into an ambulance to transport him to hospital for treatment at Matang Raya village in Aceh on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

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Southeast Asia

Four boats carrying some 1,400 Rohingya migrants were rescued off the coasts of Indonesia and Malaysia today, a day after nearly 600 others arrived in a wooden vessel off Indonesia’s Aceh.
