Myanmar is likely to attend a regional meeting next week on addressing the crisis involving thousands of minority Muslims fleeing the Southeast Asian nation by boat.
The Myanmar government was initially reluctant to send a representative to the May 29 meeting in neighbouring Thailand. Last week, Maj. Zaw Htay, director of the office of Myanmar’s president, says his government will not accept that it is the source of the problem.
Thailand’s Deputy Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai confirmed Wednesday that Myanmar has accepted the invitation.
Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister Thant Kyaw told reporters that “we all have to sit down and we all have to consider how to tackle this problem.”
For decades, the minority Muslim Rohingya have suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in majority-Buddhist Myanmar. Denied citizenship by national law, they are effectively stateless.
In the last three years, attacks on Rohingya have left hundreds dead and sparked an exodus of an estimated 120,000 people who have boarded human traffickers’ boats to flee to other countries.
Thanyarat Doksone, Bangkok : 4 p.m. (0900 GMT)
The International Organization for Migration is welcoming the decision by Malaysia and Indonesia to accept the boat people fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Kiko Rosario, Bangkok : 2-45 p.m. (0745 GMT)
Migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh who were rescued by Indonesian fishermen after being stranded at sea for months say all they wanted was to go to a Muslim country.
“We went on the boat to look for a Muslim country, either Malaysia or Indonesia,” Asranal Ali from Myanmar tells The Associated Press . “But it doesn’t matter what country as long it’s a Muslim country.”
Another Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar, Hasan Ali, says they were forced to leave by Buddhists. “We could not reject. Otherwise, we were beaten.”
Once they were at high sea, “the captain and his companions escaped with a lifeboat.”
Most want to go majority-Muslim countries in Southeast Asia, and on Wednesday, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to take them in after weeks of turning their boats away.
Fadlan Syam, Aceh, Indonesia : 2 p.m. (0700 GMT)
A spokesman for the International Organization for Migration says the rescue of refugees stranded at sea “isn’t happening fast enough.”
Joe Lowry told The Associated Press that the migrants Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis escaping poverty “are in grave peril of losing their lives.”
Lowry says they need to be found and brought onshore first, then we can look into the long-term implications, including where they can go back home, a third country or stay where they are.
“But unless we get them onshore and save their lives, there will be no long term for these people,” he says.
Lowry admits it’s a difficult task because they are on small boats and there are thousands of other fishing boats in the same sea, looking the same.
Kiko Rosario, Bangkok :1-30 p.m. (0630 GMT)
Sirajul Islam, a Rohingya who was among several hundred migrants brought to shore in Indonesia, says their ship was earlier chased away by the Thai navy after being provided with food and drinks.
The 23-year-old also says he saw for himself “how 10 of us, including women and children, died of starvation” while being stranded on the boat for months.
The Thai navy said earlier it has been providing help to the migrants, but that most of them did not want to land in Thailand and insisted on going to Malaysia.
Razali Puteh, the fisherman who first spotted the migrants, said he and others were fishing about 37 miles (60 kilometres) off the coast of Indonesia’s Aceh province when they saw the overcrowded trawler about 2 miles (3 kilometres) away.
“When coming close, I was very surprised with what I saw on the boat,” he said. “It was crammed with people ... I was speechless and breaking down into tears when watching them screaming, waving hands and cloth.”
Fakhrurradzie Gade, Aceh, Indonesia: 2-15 p.m. (0615 GMT)
The foreign ministers of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have promised to take necessary action against human traffickers who have been driving the exodus of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims.
According to a joint statement after talks in Malaysia on Wednesday, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman says the three Southeast Asian nations will take steps to bring the perpetrators of such heinous crime to justice.
Thailand has already arrested several police and local officials after authorities uncovered jungle camps where the trafficked Rohingya had been held until their families agreed to pay ransom for their release.
Eileen Ng, Putrajaya, Malaysia: 1-45 p.m. (0545 GMT)
After weeks of turning away boats with migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to provide them with temporary shelter.
The announcement was made Wednesday by Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman after a meeting with his counterparts from Indonesia and Thailand to address the plight of the migrants.
Most of them are the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar and others are Bangladeshis fleeing poverty.
Anifah told reporters that the two countries agreed to give the estimated 7,000 migrants stranded at sea temporary shelter “provided that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international community.”
A few thousand migrants have already made it to shore in Indonesia’s Aceh province and Malaysia’s Langkawi island.
