700 sinking migrants rescued off Aceh
NEWS CENTER (DİHA) - More than 700 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar have been rescued from a sinking boat off Indonesia's coast.
Reports say another boat was turned back by the Indonesian navy. The fate of another vessel of stranded migrants off the coast of Thailand is unclear after it was towed it out of Thai waters.
Human Rights Watch has warned of deadly "human ping pong" in the Andaman sea, where thousands more are believed to be adrift, struggling to land. Medical officials told that of those rescued off of Indonesia's Aceh province on Friday, eight were critically ill.
"According to initial information... they were pushed away by the Malaysian navy to the border of Indonesian waters," a police chief in the city of Lansa, Aceh province, told. He said that their boat was sinking and that Indonesian fishermen ferried them to shore.
The official policy of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia is that they will push back migrants trying to arrive on their shores. However, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on these countries to "keep their borders and ports open in order to help the vulnerable people who are in need". He said countries were obliged to rescue stricken boats and to respect an international ban on rejecting prospective refugees.
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