Langkawi, Malaysia--Malaysia joined Indonesia on Wednesday in vowing to turn back vessels bearing a wave of migrants, drawing warnings that the hardline policy could be a death sentence for boatloads of people at risk of starvation and disease.
As the UN's refugee agency accused regional authorities of playing with lives, more grim accounts emerged from among hundreds of migrants who endured weeks of torment at sea before being dumped by human-traffickers.
Mizanur Rahman, a 14-year-old Bangladeshi boy, said he and a friend spent two agonising months crammed aboard a boat with an estimated 600 other people.
They subsisted on a single plate of rice per day, but were given nothing to eat the final two weeks, Rahman told AFP.
He spoke in the northern Indonesian region of Aceh, where the two friends washed up this week after traffickers told them to "swim to shore if we wanted to stay alive".
"We wanted to go to Malaysia, dreaming of a better future of our families. After everything that happened to us, I would now prefer to die here rather than go back home," Rahman said.
Migrant groups are warning that thousands more men, women and children are believed stuck at sea or at risk of abandonment by smugglers since a Thai police crackdown disrupted people-smuggling routes.
Thailand has called for a May 29 regional summit to address what it called an "unprecedented increase" in arrivals of ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and impoverished Bangladeshi migrants.
But Malaysia -- where more than 1,100 migrants came ashore this week -- said it would turn away boats entering its waters unless they were about to sink.
The Indonesian navy already has turned away at least one vessel packed with hundreds of abandoned migrants.
AFP
