Seventeen Bangladeshi migrants have returned home after being thrown from a boat bound for Malaysia and forced to swim two hours to shore.
The migrants had spent two months aboard the boat in the Bay of Bengal packed with migrants fleeing poverty to Southeast Asia, before they were thrown overboard in the early hours of this morning.
After two hours in the water, they finally reached shore in neigbouring Burma, seeking refuge in a village before authorities were alerted, Border Guard Bangladesh commander Abujar al-Jahid said.
"All 17 of the returnees are Bangladeshi nationals. They looked emaciated. They said they were thrown from a Malaysia-bound Thai human smuggling ship," he told AFP.
One of the Bangladeshis, Mohammad Nabi, said smugglers had forced him to call home and ask relatives to give 70,000 taka (€800) to intermediaries.
"Some 37 of us who paid them the money were pushed off the ship before dawn. We then swam for about two hours," Nabi said, adding that only 27 of them made it to shore.
Speaking from the southern Bangladesh coastal district of Cox's Bazar where he is now in police custody, Nabi said the smugglers gave him and around 200 others on board one cup of rice a day each and dried chillies during their two-month ordeal.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has ordered the navy and coastguard to conduct search and rescue operations for boats carrying stricken migrants including ethnic Rohingya from Burma.
"I have further ordered [the] Royal Malaysian Navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency to conduct search and rescue efforts for Rohingya boats.
"We have to prevent loss of life," Mr Najib said on his Facebook account.
This morning's statement marked the first clear indication that Malaysian vessels would actively seek to reach such boats.
Yesterday, the Malaysian and Indonesian foreign ministers announced a breakthrough in the impasse involving thousands of migrants feared to be stranded at sea.
They said the two countries would allow the migrants to land on their shores, ending a much-condemned policy of turning them away, but did not specify at the time whether Malaysian forces would search for and rescue such boats.
Nearly 3,000 migrants have swam to shore or been rescued off Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand after a Thai crackdown on people-smuggling threw the illicit trade into chaos.
The boatloads of starving Rohingya and Bangladeshis have typically been found abandoned by their smuggling syndicates and left to fend for themselves.
Elsewhere, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha has told critic's of his government migrant policy they should "migrate" and swap places with those seeking to enter the country.
Thailand has been criticised for not following the lead of Indonesia and Malaysia in agreeing to help stranded migrants.
In a budget speak, the former army leader who took over in a coup last year said: "anyone who supports this idea (of accepting boatpeople), please contribute one baht a day or take them to your home when their case has been processed."
"Or you migrate out to the sea and bring them to live here instead," he added.
