With Thailand accused, India says hundreds feared dead at sea

[Coventina]

Source: AFP

PORT BLAIR, India (AFP) — India said Sunday that hundreds of people were missing at sea, believed to be part of a wave of boat people allegedly dragged out to the middle of the ocean by Thailand and left to die.

Thailand has denied the accusations, but accounts of survivors and the latest reports from the Indian coast guard have piled the pressure on Bangkok, and the Thai government said it would meet rights groups on Monday.

The Thai navy is accused of detaining the migrants, from a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar, after they washed up on the Thai coast -- and then towing them to sea and leaving them to their fate.

India's coast guard said Sunday it had rescued hundreds of the refugees from the Rohingya ethnic group, who live along the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, but that hundreds more were feared lost.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jCn9uC5oDoi7lO7CluOYnPsV9t_g

[Sultana]

1. We live in a evil world

:(

[shireen]

2. how cruel.

that is sickening. these are human beings.

[2Design]

3. gitmo and torture or this - sounds like same thing to me n/t

[acmavm]

4. First thought, how much money to we provide for the survival of the Thai

government? Because you understand who really gets that 'foreign aid' cash, right?

edit:

Well, I found one instance of how we pump in aid to these thugs. And they use it to kill peasants:

<snip>

But it isn’t just Afghanistan. The U.S. has a long history of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses and unintended consequences in the name of eradicating illicit drugs overseas. For example, between 2001 and 2003, the U.S. gave more than $12 million to Thailand for drug interdiction efforts. Over ten months in 2003, the Thai government sent out anti-drug “death squads” to carry out the summary, extra-judicial executions of as many as 4,000 suspected drug offenders. Many were later found to have had nothing to do with the drug trade at all. Though the U.S. State Department denounced the killings, the United States continued to give the same Thai regime millions in aid for counter-narcotics operations.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x417734

[aquart]

5. Every one of us who lives on a coastline is at risk for the same fate.

When the waters start burying coastal cities there will be MILLIONS of refugees, far more than anyplace can absorb.

They'll take some of us at first...then realize it's impossible.