Malaysia, Indonesia to accept migrant boats finally

Putrajaya

After a week of cries, suffering and pressure from the rest of the world, Malaysia and Indonesia said yesterday that they would no longer turn away boatpeople, a breakthrough in the region's migrant crisis that came just hours after hundreds more starving people were rescued at sea.

Earlier, Myanmar, whose policies toward its ethnic Rohingya minority are widely blamed for fuelling the human flow, also softened its line by offering to provide humanitarian aid to stricken migrants.

 Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand had sparked growing international outrage by driving off boats overloaded with exhausted and dying Rohingya as well as Bangladeshis.

 But Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman, in a joint press appearance with his Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi, announced that "the towing and the shooing (away of boats) is not going to happen" any more.

 "We also agreed to offer them temporary shelter provided that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international community," Anifah said.

 The pair spoke after talks with Thai Foreign Minister Tanasak Patimapragorn.

 Thailand did not sign on to the offer, however.

 A Thai foreign ministry  statement later said officials would not "push back migrants stranded in Thai waters".

 It called on Southeast Asian nations and the international community to "work collectively to solve this problem, which should not be left to any country alone". 

Nearly 3,000 boatpeople have swum to shore or been rescued off the three countries over the past 10 days after a Thai crackdown on human-trafficking threw the illicit trade into chaos, with some of the syndicates involved abandoning their helpless human cargo at sea.

 Anifah said Malaysian intelligence estimates that about 7,000 people are still stranded at sea.

 The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) said Wednesday's announcement was "an important initial step in the search for solutions to this issue, and vital for the purpose of saving lives".

 In a statement it called for migrants to be brought ashore "without delay" and for countries in the region to address the root causes of the large-scale migration.

 Joe Lowry, a Bangkok-based spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental body, called the move "brave and timely". (AFP)