By Roni Bintang and Al-Zaquan Amer Hamzah
LHOKSUKON, Indonesia/KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 (Reuters) -
M alaysia detained more than a thousand Bangladeshi and Rohingya
refugees, including dozens of children, police said, a day after
authorities rescued hundreds stranded off the coast of
Indonesia's western tip.
There has been a huge increase in refugees from impoverished
Bangladesh and Myanmar drifting on boats to Malaysia and
Indonesia in recent days after Thailand, usually the initial
destination in the region's people smuggling network, announced
a crackdown on the trafficking.
Over 100 refugees from these countries were found wandering
around in southern Thailand last week, apparently after they
were abandoned by the smugglers.
An estimated 25,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and
Bangladeshis boarded people smugglers' boats in the first three
months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014,
the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has said.. Most
travel in rickety traffickers' boats to Thailand, where they are
held in squalid jungle camps until a ransom is paid.
Police on the northwest Malaysian island of Langkawi, close
to the border with Thailand, said three boats arrived in the
middle of the night to unload the refugees, who were taken into
custody as they came ashore. One boat was discovered after it
got stuck on a breakwater, but the other two vessels escaped.
There was no immediate word on the crew.
"They came from their respective countries, moved towards
Thailand and into Malaysia by Langkawi," local police chief
Harrith Kam Abdullah told Reuters. He did not elaborate.
The boats contained 555 Bangladeshis and 463 Rohingya, who
would be handed over to the immigration department, he added.
Malaysia, one of Southeast Asia's wealthier economies, has
long been a magnet for illegal immigrants from poorer countries
in the region.
Nearly 600 migrants thought to be Rohingya refugees and
Bangladeshis were rescued from at least two wooden boats
stranded off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province on Sunday,
authorities said.
The overcrowded boats, which were carrying nearly 100 women
and dozens of children among the refugees, were towed to shore
by fishermen after running out of fuel.
Thai police spokesman Lieutenant General Prawut Thawornsiri
said the crackdown in people smuggling had prompted the rush of
arrivals elsewhere.
"Yes, our crackdown is affecting the boats," he told Reuters
in Bangkok. "They are going to Indonesia. Why else would they go
to Indonesia? It is so far. ...Our job is to block the boats and
not let them land on our shores."
MASS GRAVES
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ordered a clean up of
suspected human trafficking camps around the country after 33
bodies, believed to be of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh,
were found in shallow graves in the south of the country, near
Malaysia.
First Admiral Maritime Zulkifli bin Abu Bakar, the head of
criminal investigations in the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement
Agency, said the arrivals in Malaysia were a surprise and
couldn't say if they were linked to the Thai crackdown.
"We didn't expect large numbers like this to come down," he
said.
Of those rescued off Indonesia, around 50 were taken to
hospital. "In general, they were suffering from starvation and
many were very thin," said North Aceh police chief Achmadi.
Some of the migrants had initially believed they had arrived
in Malaysia.
The refugees were being held in a gymnasium in the town of
Lhoksukon, about 20 km (12 miles) from where they were brought
ashore.
Mohammad Kasim, a Bangladeshi migrant on one of the boats,
told Reuters that each passenger paid 4,400 ringgit ($1,200) for
the journey to what they thought would be Malaysia. Three people
died on the journey and were dumped in the sea, he said.
"We are hearing the passengers were left close to shore and
were told that this is Malaysia and you got what you paid for.
They came onshore and found out it wasn't Malaysia," said Mark
Getchell, head of the International Organization for Migration
in Indonesia.
An agency official estimated that around 300 people had died
at sea in the first quarter of this year as a result of
starvation, dehydration and abuse by boat crews.
Kasim, 44, said he had left the Bangladesh town of Bogra a
month ago on a small boat with 30-40 other people in the hope of
finding a job in Malaysia. An agency in Bogra helped arrange the
trip.
"Before, I worked in Malaysia for three years in
construction when I was 16. I wanted to go back because it is
very difficult to find work in Bangladesh," Kasim, speaking in
Malay, told Reuters.
After leaving Bogra, they arrived at a Thai beach where he
said they stayed for 21 days before leaving on a larger ship
with hundreds of passengers.
"I didn't know where I was but I was on the beach," Kasim
said.
(Additional reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Aubrey Belford
in Bangkok; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Raju
Gopalakrishnan)
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