BANGKOK, Thailand – The emerging scandal involving the Thai army’s alleged mistreatment of hundreds of ethnic Rohingya from Burma is slowly getting more and more worrying each day.
This picture taken December 23 by a tourist to Thailand's Similan Islands shows handcuffed refugees under guard.
The Rohingya have long been persecuted in Burma (or Myanmar as the junta renamed it) - many are stateless, living in horrendous poverty on Burma’s border with Bangladesh, unwanted and downtrodden.
Some 200,000 are on the Bangladeshi side of the border, scraping a living in sprawling refugee camps.
That context perhaps explains why so many thousand each year risk their lives in unseaworthy boats to try and find a better life in south-east Asia.
The men that boarded those boats must have known the journey would be perilous. They kissed good-bye to their wives and children and embarked on a voyage that was fraught with risk, destination unknown, but with the ultimate hope it would be transformative.
Just the slimmest chance of earning a few dollars a day in Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand made it seem worth gambling with their lives. Watch how the refugees’ plight came to light
