THAILAND'S Prime Minister has admitted that boatloads of Rohingya asylum-seekers have been towed out to sea and allowed to "drift" by Thai authorities, reversing weeks of denials of mistreatment of the Muslim minority from Burma.
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More than 1000 Rohingya boat people are believed to have been herded into wooden boats with no engines and left at sea over the past seven weeks.
Hundreds have been rescued or washed up to shore in Indonesia and the Andaman Islands, showing scars from alleged beatings and saying they were left with little food and water to survive.
Hundreds more cannot be accounted for, and are presumed drowned.
"There are attempts, I think, to let these people drift to other shores," the Thai leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, told CNN in an interview aired yesterday.
"I have asked whether people are aware of such practices. The one thing that is clear is that, when these practices do occur, it is done on the understanding that there is enough food and water supplied."
By conceding that the boatloads of Rohingya have been allowed to drift, Mr Abhisit has tacitly acknowledged that the boats do not have engines.
Survivors of the practice have detailed how engines were stripped from their vessels before being towed out to sea.
Mr Abhisit said his investigation had yet to uncover who was responsible but that he regretted "any losses".
The concession follows international condemnation of the practice, and criticism and expressions of deep concern from the governments of Indonesia and Australia about the incidents.
There have been calls, too, for Burma's military dictatorship to treat the Rohingya more humanely, amid allegations from groups such as Amnesty International that they are stripped of their land, beaten and forced to pay high tax rates.
In a statement this month Burma's Government simply denied the Rohingya exist in Burma.
This week the country's envoy to Hong Kong, Ye Myint Aung, wrote to other foreign missions and media organisations there saying Rohingya were "as ugly as ogres".
Their darker skin was evidence, he said, that they were not Burmese; it was not "fair and soft" like a "Myanmar gentleman", he said.
Thailand and Indonesia have insisted the Rohingya are "economic migrants" seeking better job opportunities, not genuine refugees.
The fate of the Rohingya will be discussed at a meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) this month and at a regional forum on people-smuggling tentatively scheduled for March.
Australia is a participant in the latter forum, known as the "Bali Process".
