SE Asia urged to save migrants feared adrift at sea

Thousands of migrants believed to be stranded at sea without food and water could die unless Southeast Asian governments act urgently to rescue them, migrant groups and the UN warned today.
Underscoring the concern, a migrant organisation said a vessel was adrift somewhere near the Thai or Malaysian coast with around 350 people -- including women and children -- but no food or water, while Thailand called a regional summit on the issue.
Indonesia's navy, however, said earlier it had turned away one boat carrying hundreds of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, whose fate remains uncertain.
Dhaka, meanwhile, detained a trawler after it was cast adrift with 116 Malaysia-bound illegal migrants on board.

Nearly 2,000 boatpeople from the two impoverished nations -- many of them members of Myanmar's oppressed Rohingya minority -- have swum ashore, been rescued or intercepted off Malaysia and Indonesia in recent days.
Many of them were thin, weak or in poor health after weeks at sea.

The Arakan Project, a group advocating for the rights of Muslim Rohingya says as many as 8,000 other people may be adrift.
The group said it had spoken by phone with passengers aboard the vessel carrying 350 people, who said they were abandoned by their Thai human-traffickers.
"They told us they have had no food and water for the last three days. They have called for urgent rescue," said Chris Lewa, the group's founder.

Ali Hussein, a 31-year-old Rohingya from Myanmar, is among more than 1,000 people who swam ashore in Malaysia from their smuggling ships Sunday and Monday.
Like thousands from the Rohingya community, he said he was "running for my life" from sectarian violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
He and about 800 other people endured 43 days on an overcrowded vessel bound for Thailand as meagre food and water supplies dwindled to nothing.
The ship diverted to Malaysia's Langkawi island where the hungry passengers leapt into the sea in a desperate swim to safety.
"There was no more food or water so we just jumped out of the boat," he said.

Rohingya survivors of the route have previously told AFP of harrowing sea passages in which passengers died of hunger or sickness or were beaten to death by smugglers, their bodies tossed overboard.