Thais hold more migrants amid row

By Jonathan Head BBC News, Bangkok

The Thai military is accused of sending refugees off to likely death

The Thai military has taken into custody another group of asylum-seekers from Burma's Rohingya minority.

It comes amid accusations - denied by the military - that units set hundreds of refugees adrift at sea last month.

A boat carrying 46 Rohingyas was intercepted this morning off an island in southern Thailand, according to NGO sources in the region.

Survivors have accused the Thai military of towing them out to sea in boats with no engines and no food.

They have turned up in Indonesia and the Andaman islands over the past week, after drifting there.

The commander of the military units responsible for dealing with asylum-seekers has denied accusations that his troops have been towing hundreds of Rohingyas out to sea and setting them adrift.

However, testimony from exhausted and dehydrated survivors who have reached the Andaman Islands or Indonesia's Aceh province describes brutal treatment at the hands of the Thai security forces.

'Security risk'

They say they were detained on an offshore island, then pushed onto boats without engines, and with their hands tied. They say many of the asylum-seekers died trying to swim back to land.

Privately, some Thai military and police sources have admitted to the BBC that this has been happening - they say the escalating numbers of Rohingyas reaching Thailand from Burma or Bangladesh are seen as a security risk, because of fears they may include Islamic militants.

The reason they disable their engines, they say, is to prevent them trying to come back to Thailand.

Refugee welfare groups have condemned the practice as inhumane.

The Thai government has so far been unable to comment on the allegations. Thailand accommodates millions of illegal migrants, mainly from neighbouring Burma, but takes a hard line against some, forcibly deporting those thought to threaten security.