Staff Reporter
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday agreed that he would allow international agencies to talk about the alleged abuse of illegal migrants by the Thai authorities, according to news agencies.
“They (the agencies) should talk with us and see how we can work together. But they also have to recognise the fundamental problem was not caused by Thailand. It is a problem of disparity of (economic) opportunities,” he said while talking to reporters.
Abhisit made the observation a day after the United Nations refugee agency asked for access to the migrants themselves. The agency says several illegal migrants are in Thai custody.
Earlier, a Bangkok-based advocacy group alleged that Thai security officials forced as many as 1,000 migrants – mostly stateless Rohingyas from Bangladesh – back out to sea in rickety boats since early December.
The group accused the Thai navy of forcing several hundred of the migrants onto a barge in the middle of the ocean, where several hundreds later drowned. More than 100 of them were rescued by Indian authorities in the remote Andaman Islands.
The UNHCR in a statement on Tuesday said the Thai authorities were holding 80 Rohingyas on Koh Sai Daeng, a Thai island in the Andaman Sea. The whereabouts of 46 others, intercepted on Friday on a boat and reportedly handed over to the Thai military, were unknown, the statement said.
The Thai government has not confirmed that it is holding the migrants.
“We’re still awaiting a response from the Thai government to a request that we sent last week for further information on this issue,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.
The Thai Prime Minister on Tuesday said the Thai authorities would investigate the incidents, though he insisted the government has no policy of mistreating illegal migrants.
Meanwhile, the UNHCR yesterday asked Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry for permission to visit Sabang island navy base. Nearly 200 Rohingyas migrants have been detained there since January 7, when they were found floating in a cramped wooden boat without food or water off Indonesia’s Aceh province.
The agency wants to evaluate their health and need for protection, UN spokeswoman Anita Restu said.
The Indonesian government has refused media access to the migrants, saying they are investigating.
Thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas leave Bangladesh aboard rickety boats each year in hope of finding work in neighboring countries. In the last three years, one of the most popular migration routes has been by boat to Thailand and then overland to Malaysia.
Courtesy: nation.ittefaq.com
