100 die in fight for food on boat

FE Team | Published: May 18, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Migrants rescued from a sinking boat off Indonesia have told the BBC that about 100 people died after a fight broke out over the last remaining food, reports BBC.
Survivors told of horrific conditions. Three men separately said people were stabbed, hanged or thrown overboard.
The 700 rescued migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh are being processed by the Indonesian authorities.
Thousands of migrants are estimated to be adrift in South East Asian waters, denied permission to land.
The BBC's Martin Patience, who spoke to some of the survivors in the Indonesian port of Langsa, cautions that their accounts cannot be verified.
However, three migrants made similar statements in separate conversations.
If true, the claims will add to the growing international pressure on Asian countries to find a solution to this crisis, our correspondent says.
The migrants had wanted to land in Malaysia but say they were driven away by the Malaysian navy.
Meantime, Reuters reports from the Andaman Sea: For several days, the fate of roughly 300 desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants has been subject to a repetitive dance in waters just out of sight of gleaming Thai beach resorts.
Their boat, which those on board say has been at sea for up to three months, was found drifting last Thursday near Koh Lipe island, close to the Malaysian border, with parts of its engine missing. Thai sailors fixed the engine and handed the migrants food and water, before turning them back out to the Andaman Sea.
That was the beginning of what local Thai navy chief Lieutenant Commander Veerapong Nakprasit calls "a cycle", with the overcrowded fishing vessel bouncing between the waters of two countries determined not to take them in.
This rickety boat was just one of many that are at the centre of a regional crisis triggered by a flood of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
Migrants have long made their way from the Bay of Bengal's southeast corner to Thailand, but a crackdown on traffickers by the Thai government disrupted the route and several thousand were left at sea with nowhere to go, though more than 2,000 have made it to the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia.
Thailand's foreign ministry said in a statement that it had informed the people on the boat found off Koh Lipe that they could come ashore for humanitarian assistance, but "they informed the Thai side that they wished to travel onwards".
After being towed out on Friday, it headed southwest, according to Thai navy radar tracking seen by Reuters. It then took a jagged counterclockwise arc towards Malaysian waters, before its engine stopped and it drifted again in the sea.
Piecing together what happened to the migrants after that is difficult to establish because of contradictory accounts from Thai officials and near-total silence from Malaysia.