Bangladesh’s leader, Sheikh Hasina, said Sunday that those seeking to leave the country in an “illegal way” should be punished along with the human traffickers who facilitate their escape.
The statement comes amid a crisis among Southeast Asian nations over the fate of thousands of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar who have taken to sea on boats, hoping to settle elsewhere in the region.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an estimated 25,000 migrants took to seas in Southeast Asia in the first quarter of 2015.
“Side by side with the middlemen, punishment will have to be given against those who are moving from the country in illegal way,” she told senior officials Sunday, Bangladesh’s state media reported. “They are tainting the image of the country along with pushing their life into a danger.”
Bangladeshi authorities are standing by to repatriate 208 Bangladeshi citizens who were rescued by the Myanmar navy in its territorial waters, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
“We have been informed through sources that the rescued Bangladeshis are staying at a refugee camp located at a Madrasha building of Thandwe area of Rakhine state in Myanmar,” the agency quoted Lt Col Abu Zar, a Bangladeshi border commander as saying, citing Bangladeshi media.
“Local members of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are providing food to the Bangla language people.”
The report added that there were still dozens of Bangladeshi citizens stranded at sea in Myanmar territorial waters.
In recent weeks, hundreds of migrants have come ashore in Malaysia and Aceh in Indonesia after making the risky journey south through the Andaman Sea.
They are both Rohingya — minority Muslims in Myanmar — and economic migrants from Bangladesh.
U.S. military request
The Thai military said the U.S. Navy had made a request to use one of its airports to provide assistance to migrants stranded on boats in the Andaman Sea.
The U.S. had asked to keep surveillance aircraft in Phuket after the completion of anti-submarine training exercises, Thai Air Force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Sanchukorn confirmed to CNN.
The U.S. and Thai armed forces took part in joint operations, codenamed Guardian Sea, last week and as a result U.S. aircraft were permitted to fly in Thai airspace.
Montol said that the U.S. request was made at an operational, rather than formal, level and was misdirected as permission to use Phuket’s international airport would be granted at the discretion of Thailand’s airport authority.
He said that he told U.S. military liaisons to refer their request through governmental channels.
At a meeting last week, Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to accept thousands of migrants temporarily as long as the international community helps to resettle them within one year.
Thailand has yet to announce what role it will play, although in a joint statement, the three nations said they had all taken measures beyond their international obligations — to address the “current influx of irregular migrants.”
Mass graves discovered
Mass graves of refugees caught up in the human-trafficking trade have been found in northern Malaysia near the border with Thailand, authorities said Sunday.
Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the trafficking camps were believed to have been in operation for at least five years and were only abandoned when authorities arrived on the scene, according to Bernama, the Malaysian state news agency.
He said officials were still counting the number of bodies in the graves, which were found near 17 tents in the Padang Besar area of Perlis state.
“With the cooperation of Thailand, we will find more and more,” Zahid told reporters.
The Prime Minister, Najib Razak, vowed late Sunday night in a tweet to bring the perpetrators to justice.
“I am deeply concerned with graves found on Malaysian soil purportedly connected to people smuggling. We will find those responsible.”
Graves previously found in Thailand
Police in Thailand have reported finding graves and camps from human trafficking on their side of the border in recent weeks, prompting a crackdown on the trade from authorities.
But that has intensified the crisis at sea. Boats carrying the migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh have chosen to stay away from the shore, deepening the plight of the people crammed on board, who often lack food and drinking water.
Many of the migrants caught up in the crisis are Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic minority fleeing persecution in western Myanmar. There are also Bangladeshi economic migrants seeking work in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.