Malaysia, Indonesia to let 'boat people' come ashore

Newly arrived migrants take a shower in Simpang Tiga, Aceh province, Indonesia. [Photo/IC]

THAILAND OPTS OUT

Aman said temporary shelters would be set up, but not in Thailand, a favoured transit point for migrants hoping to work illegally in Malaysia.

Thai authorities have said they will allow the sick to come to shore for medical attention, but have stopped short of saying whether they would allow other migrants to disembark.

Still, Thailand said on Wednesday that it would not force boats back out to sea.

"Thailand attaches great importance to humanitarian assistance and will not push back migrants stranded in the Thai territorial water," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Thailand has called a regional conference on the issue in Bangkok for May 29.

"We maintain our stance that we are a transit country," Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha told reporters in Bangkok.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch welcomed the joint statement, which he said "should mark the end of the region's push back policies against Rohingya and Bangladeshi boat people", but added it was disturbing that "Thailand was missing in action".

Hours before the ministers met, hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants landed in Indonesia's Aceh province.

"We have to find ways to resettle them as soon as possible without creating a new moral hazard," Dewi Fortuna Anwar, political adviser to Indonesia's vice president, told reporters in Jakarta.

"If migrants start thinking of Indonesia as a transit point or as having a higher chance of getting resettled, that would create another problem that we have to prevent."

She said the main responsibility lay with Myanmar, which the United Nations said last week must stop discrimination against Rohingya Muslims to end a pattern of migration from the corner of the Bay of Bengal into the Andaman Sea and Malacca Strait.