Wednesday,
30 January 2013 THE BANGKOK POST
Nearly
350 illegal Rohingya migrants were found crammed inside two vessels
entering Thai waters in southern Ranong and Phuket provinces on
Tuesday.
In
Ranong, a boat carrying about 140 Rohingya migrants was spotted
floating about 5.5 kilometres off Phayam island in Muang district
about 8.30am by a naval patrol boat.
Naval officers provided the illegal migrants with food and water, a source said. Humanitarian assistance was also provided to help them on the way to their destination.
The
Rohingya had to be sent back out to sea as authorities were already
struggling with an influx of illegal Muslim Rohingya migrants, the
source said.
Several
boats carrying Rohingya have illegally entered Thailand via this
southern province on a daily basis. In some cases, the Rohingya sunk
their own boats to prevent authorities from sending them back out to
sea, the source said.
In
Phuket, about 200 illegal Rohingya migrants were found crammed inside
a vessel searched by marine police and naval officers off Racha Noi
island in Muang district Tuesday.
The
boat was initially spotted floating between Racha Yai and Racha Noi
islands by fishermen on Monday. They provided the migrants with food
and water and told the authorities.
They
suggested the boat people land on Racha Noi, Phuket's southernmost
island, because it was uninhabited. Some of the migrants camped on
the island overnight, but most remained on the boat.
A
combined marine police and navy team descended on the boat late
Tuesday. It was not known where they were planning to take the
refugees.
The
200 Rohingya are the latest to reach southern Thailand, following a
series of arrests in Songkhla and at sea in Phangnga province this
month.
This
lifts the total number of illegal Rohingya migrants now in custody to
about 1,700.
Meanwhile,
Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul will lead a delegation of
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) members to meet Islamic
leaders and security agencies in the three southernmost border
provinces tomorrow. He said the delegation would get first-hand
information about the southern violence.
He
will also use this opportunity to seek a solution to the Rohingya
migrant problem from the OIC and ask the delegation which countries
wanted to take in the migrants who had fled from Myanmar's Rakhine
state to Thailand.
As
those migrants had entered Thailand, the kingdom had to provide them
with temporary assistance on a humanitarian basis, he said.
Authorities had to work with several international agencies such as
Unicef and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to find
a solution.
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