“Out at sea with nowhere to go,” reads the Friday front-page headline in Malaysian daily The Star, alongside a photo of Rohingya migrants waiting on a boat adrift off the coast of Thailand.
According to the UN, about 6,000 refugees fleeing Myanmar (also known as Burma) and Bangladesh are stranded at sea, a budding humanitarian disaster because Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are all turning away the migrant boats, many without food and water and dealing with spreading illness. International media and human rights organizations have described Rohingyas as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
“The Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian navies should stop playing a three-way game of human ping pong, and instead should work together to rescue all those on these ill-fated boats,” The Guardian quoted Human Rights Watch Asia’s Phil Robertson as saying.
“Taking them in is not an option, say Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand,” the newspaper writes, because it would send “the wrong message” to people in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
ABOUT THE SOURCE: The Star is an English-language, tabloid-format newspaper headquartered in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. It was founded in 1971 and has a daily circulation of between 290,000 to 300,000.
