Yangon- The flow of migrants has surged in recent months, as traffickers have stopped asking for up-front payments from the migrants.
Instead they demand large ransom fees to release their human quarry once they are at sea or ashore in Thailand or Malaysia, according to Hla Myint, a Rohingya leader in a refugee camp near the Rakhine state capital Sittwe.
That trend has led to boats being held at sea for weeks, with many more cast adrift particularly in recent weeks after the key staging point of Thailand finally began to get tough on the traffickers.
Yet his people are still willing to make the perilous journey because of the "very difficult situation" in Rakhine, Hla Myint said.
There are around 300,000 Rohingya also living in Bangladesh's southern coastal district bordering Myanmar.
But Bangladesh recognises only around a tenth of that number as refugees.
"It's no surprise that desperate people take to the sea in the hope of finding secure futures for themselves and their children," said Nicholas Farrelly, a Myanmar specialist at Australia National University.
But they remain a pariah people in Southeast Asia, Farrelly told AFP, "left to float, friendless, and often despised".
Myanmar, facing a crucial election year after decades of military rule and a surge of Buddhist nationalism, has shown no appetite to address the plight of the Rohingya.
Even Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy champion, has failed to come to their defence, with critics saying she is reluctant to alienate her supporters among the Buddhist majority.
But pressure has mounted on Myanmar since the current crisis began with the May 1 discovery of mass graves of migrants in remote smuggling camps in southern Thailand.
Thailand's ensuing crackdown has led to thousands of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants being abandoned by their gang masters, many at sea without food and water.
Malaysia and Thailand have recent days launched a limited search-and-rescue effort for the stricken boats, and Bangkok has announced a regional meeting for May 29 to address the issue.
But in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose members prize a policy of staying out of each other's affairs, Myanmar's neighbours have long deferred to it in side-stepping the Rohingya issue.
There are tentative signs that could be changing, with one Malaysian minister on Thursday demanding that ASEAN send a "very strong message" to Myanmar to stop being "so oppressive" towards the minority.
A senior Western diplomat in Yangon urged Myanmar's regional neighbours to shoulder some of the humanitarian responsibility for a cross-border trafficking trade.
"But it is not helpful when the Myanmar government denies basic facts amidst clear evidence that thousands of smuggled migrants are coming from their country," the diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
AFP
