Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva admitted in an interview with CNN yesterday that there had been instances of authorities pushing Rohingya boat people back to sea, contradicting earlier denials by the Thai military that abuses had been committed.
“It’s not exactly clear whose work it is,” Abhisit told CNN. “All the authorities say it’s not their policy, but I have reason to believe otherwise. I will certainly hold the guilty parties accountable, once I find out who is responsible.”
The Thai prime minister last month ordered an investigation into accusations that almost 1,000 Rohingya refugees had been pushed out to sea in 30 boats without engines and sufficient food supplies in December.
Tales of abuse by Thai Navy personnel emerged after hundreds of the Rohingya boat people were rescued in the territorial waters of Indonesia and India. Some 500 of the boat people pushed out to sea are still missing and feared drowned.
The Rohingya, from Myanmar’s Arakan State, have been denied citizenship in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Myanmar’s junta claims the Muslim minority originated from Bangladesh.
Persecuted and denied job opportunities and the right to own land in Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh where they live in refugee camps.
Thousands of Rohingya men have paid smugglers to take them to Thailand and Malaysia in search of work.
Thailand’s military regards the Rohingya as a security threat, fearing they will join the separatist movement in the majority Muslim deep South, where almost 3,300 people have died in clashes and revenge killings over the past five years.
The Thai government has proposed talks between the concerned countries — Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand — to find a long-term solution to the refugee problem.
The Rohingya issue is expected to be discussed on the sidelines of the upcoming ASEAN summit from Feb. 27 to March 1 at the Hua Hin beach resort, 130km southwest of Bangkok.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS