Earlier today, local fishermen on the Andaman Sea rescued a wooden fishing vessel carrying 794 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, and brought them to Indonesia. Directly after that, yet another fishing boat carrying a reported 400 desperate migrants was put on the radar after Thai authorities turned it away from the country’s shores. Up to this date, an estimated 6,000 to 20,000 migrants have been left to drift in boats on the sea, amidst a worsening global humanitarian crisis.
Myanmar migrants fleeing from religious persecution
The majority of the boat’s passengers identify as Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar. Most of the Rohingyan population resides in northern Rakhine townships, composing over 85 percent of the region’s demographic. Perhaps most notably, the Rohingyas have been internationally recognized as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. In the past, many of the persecuted religious members have fled to refugee camps and ghettos in Bangladesh, as well as to sites along the Burmese-Thai border, where many of them remain displaced today in camps.
The vessel in question is said to have initially set its sights on debarking in Malaysia, and is just one unit in a larger flotilla that is largely under the control of traffickers. Since the beginning of March, the boats have wandering from point to point, hoping for neighboring countries to take in their fleeing refugees.
In addition to religious persecution, the passengers all suffer from economic hardship and, to a greater extent, general ethnic discrimination. The Myanmar migrants, who, up until a probable few weeks ago had been fed constant supplies of food and water by the traffickers, have been left to their own devices with a scarce food supply.
Hardships amidst stringent human trafficking crackdown
During this past week alone, up to 1,500 Myanmar migrants have landed ashore Malaysia and Indonesia. Most of them have been left in traumatized states, uncared and unguaranteed for. The captain and crewmembers of the red-and-green vessel reportedly abandoned the boat last week. A portion of the passengers reportedly refused to get off on Thailand’s shores because the country is in the process of a heavy crackdown on traffickers, but a Thai journalist documents that a significant other portion onboard were visibly distraught that they were not disembarking.
In the wake of this crisis, attention must be turned onto both Malaysia and Myanmar — the first, a predominantly Muslim country that has had the reputation of admitting thousands of Rohingya migrants in the past, and the latter, a state that has a history of institutional discrimination against its own Rohingya Muslim population, denying them democratic rights to citizenship.
