Another boat found at sea as Rohingya refugee crisis deepens

Another boat, this one crammed with 500 Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis, was found off Malaysia's coast today, an activist and officials said, as international community called on Southeast Asian governments to open their borders and step up search-and-rescue efforts.
Thousands of migrants are believed to be stranded at sea, many with little or water.
It was not immediately clear if those offloaded near the city of Penang would be given refuge, said Zafar Ahmad, a Malaysian human rights activist. Their vessel was discovered hours after a maritime official warned that new arrivals would be given food, water and then sent on their way, unless their boats were sinking.

The country has already accepted more than a thousand refugees since Sunday. Today's boat would make it 1,500. Indonesia, which has taken 600 such refugees, turned a boat away earlier this week. But a foreign ministry spokesman denied today it had a "push back" policy, saying the vessel strayed into its waters on accident. Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters the migrants were looking for neighboring Malaysia.
"We have to help refugees who need assistance and direct them to where they want to go," he said. "It goes against our principle to chase away refugee boats that enter our territory."
Southeast Asia, which for years tried to quietly ignore the plight of Myanmar's 1.3 million Rohingya, now finds itself caught in a spiraling humanitarian crisis that in many ways it helped create.

In the last three years, more than 100,000 members of the Muslim minority have boarded ships, fleeing persecution, according to the UN refugee agency.
No countries want them, fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants.
But governments at the same time respected the wishes of Myanmar at regional gatherings, avoiding discussions of state-sponsored discrimination against the Rohingya.