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Thailand calls regional conference on refugees

AP, Bangkok. Thailand
Thailand offered yesterday to host a regional conference to prevent the mass migration - and resulting suffering - of refugees after the Thai : navy was accused of brutally mistreating boat people from Bangladesh.
Foreign Ministry officials met envoys from ■ India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and : Myanmar to discuss the exodus of refugees ; from camps in the impoverished South Asian : nation, ministry spokesman Thani ; Thongpakdeesaid.
"We are also in talks with the U N. High ; Commissioner for Refugees both in Thailand • and in Geneva to help alleviate what these ; people are facing right now, "he said.
Thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas -: members of a stateless, Muslim ethnic group
that fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar - leave Bangladesh aboard rickety boats each year in hopes of finding work elsewhere. One of the most popular migration routes in recent years was by boat to Thailand then overland to Malaysia.
Thailand has recently come under fire for allegedly mistreating those migrants.
Two migrants told a refugees' advocacy group they were among hundreds detained and beaten by Thai authorities on a remote island and abandoned in the Indian Ocean in boats with no engines and only a few bags of rice.
The Bangkok-based Arakan Project provided transcripts of the migrants' accounts to The Associated Press on Friday. It was the second time the group has released testimony from Bangladeshi and Rohingya illegal
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migrants who allege die Thai navy has left hundreds of them at sea twice since December. About 300 are believed to have drowned in one of the incidents.
Thai military officials have repeatedly denied they forced migrants out to sea, insisting they only detain and then repatriate them.
The survivors who spoke to Arakan are jailed on India's remote Andaman islands, where they were taken after an Indian helicopter spotted them on an island.
According to their accounts, they were headed from Bangladesh to Thailand when their boats were intercepted around Dec. 27 by Thai naval ships. They were detained with hundreds of other migrants for several days on a deserted Thai island in the Andaman Sea.
The migrants said they survived on banana leaves and handfuls of rice and were beaten by guards whom they identified as Thai security forces.
The Thai government initially flatly denied the abuse charges, but Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has since said authorities will investigate the allegations.