The spectacle of thousands of desperate Rohingya Muslim "boat people" being denied landfall in Southeast Asia has laid bare the region's religious and ethnic prejudices as well as its fears of being swamped by an influx of migrants.
An estimated 6,000 or more such migrants are stranded at sea in Southeast Asia. Most of the people on the overcrowded and unseaworthy boats are thought to belong to the 1.3 million-strong Rohingya minority in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Others are believed to be from Bangladesh.
Reuters reports that while nearly 800 migrants on one boat were brought ashore Friday in Indonesia, other boats crammed full of people were turned away.
Such refusals underline "the hardening of Southeast Asia governments' stance on the boatloads of Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar," Reuters says. The Rohingya practice a blend of Sunni and Sufi Islam.