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Where is the Outrage?

By NewHampster on January 16, 2009 at 12:15 PM in Current Affairs

No, this isn’t about an atrocity against Jews or Palestinians.

Thais ‘leave boat people to die’

From my main news source, The BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7830710.stm

Beach

By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Calcutta

Thai soldiers are detaining illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Burma and forcing them back out to sea in boats without engines, survivors say.

Survivors say their hands were tied and they were towed out to sea with little or no food or water.

About 500 migrants are now recovering from acute dehydration in India’s Andaman islands and the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Thai officials were not immediately available for comment.

But sources in the police and army confirmed to the BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok that asylum seekers are being pushed out to sea. They did not provide further details about the practice.

Thousands of poor Burmese and Bangladeshis try to reach south-east Asian nations in search of work.

‘Without food’

Survivors rescued by Indian coast guards say hundreds of other asylum-seekers are still missing after leaving Bangladesh and Burma since the end of November.

They told the BBC that they paid agents to take them to Thailand by boat so that they could have a better life.

Map

They said that the Thai authorities detained many of them in Koh Sai Daeng island.

“Thai soldiers tied up our hands and then put us in boats without engines. These were towed into the high sea by motorised boats and left to drift,” said Zaw Win, a survivor rescued by Indian coast guards off the coast of Little Andamans after drifting for 12 days.

“We were without food and water. The Thai soldiers clearly wanted us to die on the boats,” Win told the BBC by telephone from a camp where survivors are being cared for.

Click for Full Story

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So NewHampster asks you, Where the fuck is the outrage?

Why did I not see this or hear of this on the news or goddess forbid on some “progressive” blog that is so concerned with the lives of innocent people?

Because these people, these refugees do not have a worldwide public relations effort to get them noticed.  Just like the people of Darfur do not have a PR firm keeping their plight in front of our eyes.

I am sick of outrage caused by PR.  That is exactly what got His Oliness elected.  Outrage over the war and Hillary Clinton’s hawkish support of the Bush policies that she trusted.  People were outraged because the Chicago PR machine never let up and never let them forget who voted for the war.

There are innocent people being killed, raped, enslaved every day. 
Show some outrage.

Cross Posted from Partizane. Home of the Inauguration Day PUMA BAWL real time live chat.