by Our Foreign Desk

A NEW refugee crisis in southeast Asia loomed yesterday with thousands of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar en route to Malaysia and Indonesia.

At least 1,018 people landed in three boats on Malaysia’s northern resort island of Langkawi, while some 600 arrived in Indonesia’s Aceh province in four craft.

In Langkawi, the migrants were smuggled in by people traffickers, who left their passengers to find their own way to shore and fled in other boats.

Local deputy police chief Jamil Ahmed said that a wooden boat capable of holding 350 people was found trapped on a sand bar late on Sunday night.

Since then 865 men, 52 children and 101 women refugees had been found. The two remaining boats were yet to be found, he said.

But a Bangladeshi man reportedly told police that the boat handlers gave the passengers directions on where to go once they reached Malaysian shores.

The migrant said they had not eaten for three days, adding that most of them were weak and thin.

“We believe there may be more boats coming,” Mr Ahmed said.

Speaking in Indonesian capital Jakarta, International Organisation for Migration deputy Indonesian mission chief Steve Hamilton said that some of the 600 migrants jumped into the water and swam as they approached the shore in Aceh.

North Aceh police chief Lieutenant-Colonel Achmadi said that they had been taken to a sports stadium in district capital Lhoksukon to be cared for.

Some needed medical attention after more than two months at sea.

Many migrants are from Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority, who have suffered a wave of persecution by their Buddhist neighbours in the last three years.

Rashid Ahmed, a Rohingya man who left Myanmar’s Rakhine state with his eldest son three months ago, said that refugees had nothing to eat on the boats.

Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project which monitors the situation of the Rohingya people, claimed an estimated 7-800 refugees were still being held by people traffickers on ships in the Malacca Strait and other nearby waters.