BANGKOK: Fifty-nine Rohingya people have been discovered on a Thai island, saying they were abandoned by traffickers en route to Malaysia, a senior police officer said Sunday.
The group — among them five children — were found on Koh Dong island in the southern Satun province on Saturday, said lieutenant general Surachet Hakpan.
Each year, thousands of the mostly Muslim minority Rohingya people, heavily persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, risk their lives in months-long expensive journeys to reach Malaysia over Thailand’s seas.
Police said they had been charged with illegal entry and could face deportation to Myanmar following a court case.
“We are providing humanitarian assistance and will investigate whether they are victims of human trafficking or if they entered illegally,” Surachet said.
The group appeared “starving and was likely to have had no food for three to five days,” a police statement said.
Group members told officers their boat was among three vessels carrying 178 people that had left Myanmar and Bangladesh, having paid an agent around 5,000 ringgit ($1,300) for the journey.
The first two boats carrying 119 people were stopped and arrested by Malaysian authorities, according to the Thai police statement.
The boat’s crew then decided to abandon those onboard on Koh Dong island — telling them that they had reached Malaysia, the group told officers.
The incident comes after the bodies of 14 Rohingya people, including children, were discovered washed up on a beach last month after they attempted to flee Myanmar.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people fled a military crackdown in the nation in 2017, bringing with them harrowing stories of murder, rape and arson.
Those still in Myanmar are widely seen as interlopers from Bangladesh and are largely denied citizenship, many rights and access to health care and education.
Muslim-majority Malaysia is a key destination for Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar or refugee camps in Bangladesh.
In 2019, a Thai boat captain was charged with smuggling 65 Rohingya people from Myanmar after their vessel was shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Satun province.
The same area was the hub of a multimillion dollar trafficking route, which unraveled in 2015 after the discovery of mass graves of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants along the border with Malaysia.
60 Rohingya found abandoned on Thai island
https://arab.news/gx9td
60 Rohingya found abandoned on Thai island
- The group — among them five children — were found on Koh Dong island in Satun province
- The crew had abandoned those onboard — telling them that they had reached Malaysia
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
