59 Rohingyas have been found on a Thai island where they say they were abandoned by smugglers on their way to Malaysia, a senior police officer said Sunday.
A group of five children were discovered on the island of Koh Dong in Satun province on Saturday, Lieutenant General Surachit Hakban said. Every year, thousands of persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Buddhism-dominated Burma risk their lives on costly, months-long journeys to reach Malaysia via the seas of Thailand. Police said they were charged with illegal entry into the country and could be deported to Burma after the case goes to trial. “We are providing humanitarian assistance and will find out if they are victims of human smuggling or if they entered there illegally,” Surachet said.
The police said in a statement that the members of the group “were starving and probably didn’t eat for three to five days.” The group told police that their boat was among three boats with 178 people that left Burma and Bangladesh after they paid a smuggler around RM5,000 ($1,300) for the trip.
Malaysian authorities stopped the first two boats with 119 people on board and arrested those on board, according to a Thai police statement. The crew then decided to leave the people on board on the island of Koh Dong and informed them that they had arrived in Malaysia, police said.
The incident comes after the bodies of 14 Rohingya people, some of them children, were found on a beach last month after they tried to flee Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas fled a military campaign against them in Burma in 2017 and have spoken of being killed, raped and burned. Those who are still in Burma are treated as troublemakers from Bangladesh, deprived of their citizenship, many rights, health care and education. Malaysia is a prime destination for Rohingya fleeing persecution in Burma or refugee camps in Bangladesh.
In 2019, a Thai boat captain was accused of smuggling 65 Burmese Rohingyas after their boat was wrecked on an island off the coast of Satun. The area itself was the center of a multi-million dollar smuggling route unearthed after mass graves of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants were discovered along the Malaysian border.
