Thailand Is Accused of Rejecting Migrants

According to an article in the New York Times, Thai authorities have detained as many as 1,000 boat people from Bangladesh and Myanmar in the past month. Many human rights groups report that these boat people were sent back out to sea in boats without engines and at least 300 people are reported to be missing at sea. These boat people are migrants from the ethnic Rohingya minority who are mostly stateless people that live in a continuous cycle of poverty, repression, escape, capture and exploitation. Reports tell of instances in the last month where 410 Rohingya migrants were forced out to sea on a Thai Navy vessel and left on board of a barge with just four barrels of water and two sacks of rice. After drifting for two weeks, about 100 of the migrants were rescued and about 300 remain missing after trying to swim to shore. Chris Lewa and expert on Rohingya issues, reported on a second case in which 580 migrants were apprehended off the Thai coast aboard three overcrowded fishing boats. These boats were reportedly towed back out to sea after their engines were removed and only two of these boats reached shore while another one is missing.
Thailand officials deny the accusations of the expulsions saying that all the migrants are processed through the legal channels. Although these reports correspond with separate allegations that Thailand has committed human rights abuses when combating Muslim rebellion in the south. In past incidents the Thai military has forced out groups of refugees which sometimes results their deaths. Although all of these expulsions were reported last week in the South China Morning Post, Thai officials still denied on Friday that any expulsions had occurred. One of the officials Lt. Col. Tara Soranarak claims that Thai officials never pushed the migrants back into the sea and they followed the necessary procedures when processing the migrants.