A flotilla of Indonesian fishermen rescued more than 430 migrants who were stranded at sea and brought them ashore to safety on Wednesday, the latest victims of a humanitarian crisis confronting Southeast Asia.
Hoping to find a solution, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia held an emergency meeting to address the plight of the migrants who are fleeing persecution in Myanmar and poverty in Bangladesh.
The migrants were rescued early Wednesday by more than a dozen fishermen’s boats, said Herman Sulaiman, from East Aceh district’s Search and Rescue Agency.
It was unclear if the migrants were on one boat or had come from several. An initial batch of 102 people were the first brought to shore in the village of Simpang Tiga in Indonesia’s eastern Aceh province, Sulaiman and other rescuers said.
“They were suffering from dehydration, they are weak and starving,” Khairul Nove, head of langsa Search and Rescue Agency in Aceh province. Among the 102 passengers were 26 women and 31 children, he said.
One of the migrants, Ubaydul Haque, 30, said the ship’s engine had failed and the captain fled, and that they were at sea for four months before Indonesian fishermen found them. “We ran out of food, we wanted to enter Malaysia but we were not allowed,” he said.
One of the fishermen who led the rescue was 40-year-old Razali Puteh. He said he spotted a green wooden trawler crammed with people who were screaming, waving their hands and clothes at him to get his attention.
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Kuala lumpur: Malaysia and Indonesia on Wednesday agreed to offer temporary shelter to 7,000 migrants stranded in the Andaman Sea, mostly the stateless Rohingyas Muslims fleeing Myanmar, in a breakthrough in the humanitarian crisis confronting Southeast Asia.
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