It’s boatpeople season, when the weather and currents bring hundreds of desperate refugees into the Andaman Sea from Myanmar and Bangladesh. It’s a perilous journey. Food supplies run low, and they’re preyed upon by human traffickers looking to sell them into slavery. A group washed up in Thailand and found some kindness after claiming the boat carrying them planned to sell them, as The Phuket News’ Nattha Thepbamrung reports:
THE PHUKET NEWS — Eighty-six starving Bangladeshi and Burmese boatpeople arrived in Phang Nga’s Kuraburi district on Tuesday evening.
Left, the starving men line up outside the District Office last night while, inside, food is prepared for them. Photos Nicole Lemmo
Nicole Lemmo, the U.S. citizen who discovered them, told The Phuket News that she and two friends were sitting in front of their rented accommodation in the Sri Phang Nga National Park at around 7pm when a man who looked very ill staggered up to them on bare feet and begged for food.
“We did not understand him at first as he spoke only Bengali, so we informed the park officers,” Lemmo said. “The officers came to see him and then discovered there were around 80 more men on the street outside. Around 80 per cent were Bangladeshi and the rest were, I believe, Rohingya. They all were starving and exhausted. Some no longer had the strength to walk.”
National park officers cooked food for the refugees and then around 9pm, Kuraburi Police came with trucks and took them to the district office where they bedded them down in a community hall.
Lemmo said that Wednesday morning, when authorities talked with the new arrivals through a Burmese translator, 86 of the refugees said they’d boarded a boat in Bangladesh hoping to get to Malaysia.
After 20 days at sea, before washing up in Thailand, they discovered the two or three men running the boat had plans to sell them.
“It’s human trafficking,” Lemmo said. “They were brought to sell in Malaysia. After landing in Thailand, the men who brought them disappeared, dumping them in the jungle in Kuraburi, [where they stumbled around] for five days before they found us. Some of them told the translator that they wanted to go back to Bangladesh.”
Anupat Rodkwan Yodrabam, Kuraburi District Chief stressed to The Phuket News that the 86 refugees are being well cared for.
“We have provided them with food, water and accommodation in the community hall for the time being,” he said. “This morning a doctor from Kuraburi hospital and officers from Kuraburi Public Health Office came to give them check-ups, and we also registered their names and details.”
He said their identities were yet to be established.
“It is not yet clear whether the Burmese contingent are Rohingya or not,” he said. “We are in the process of getting detailed information from them because we are not sure what they need.”
For now, he said, the authorities can meet the basic needs of the refugees. Anyone who wants to donate money or goods to help out should contact the Kuraburi District Office at 076-491-353.
TOP: Hungry boatpeople line up outside the Kuraburi district office in Phang Nga province on Tuesday night while food is prepared for them. Photo: Nicole Lemmo
