NAVY CONFIRMS 198 BOAT PEOPLE FOUND OFF IDI RAYEUK COAST

Jakarta, Feb 3 (ANTARA) - The Indonesian Navy confirmed here Tuesday that 198 boat people were found drifting in an unmotorized boat in waters off Idi Rayeuk, Aceh, on Monday.
The Navy's official spokesman, Commodore Iskandar Sitompul, said some of the boat people had been taken to a hospital because they needed medical help.
"We are now still taking their personal data, including the number of those who are receiving medical treatment," he said.
He said the radar of the naval base in Idi Rayeuk had detected a boat with a number of people aboard drifting in the waters at around 2 pm on Monday.
Their boat, 16 meters long and 2.5 meters wide, had no name nor engine with a cracked hull kept in tact by a rope, he said.
There were 198 people, all male, on the boat and one of them, named Rahmat, could speak Malay. He was a Moslem from Arkan, Burma.
Initially, they numbered 224 but 26 of them had died during 21 days of sailing and their bodies had been dumped into the sea.
"The boat people are now being held at the naval base in Idi Rayeuk for identification purposes and pending a decision from the government agencies authorized to deal with this kind of problem," Sitompul said.
Early in January, some 193 people from Myanmar and Bangladesh were also found drifting in a boat in waters near Weh Island in Aceh province. They are now being held in Sabang waiting for deportation to their countries of origin.
Based upon initial investigation these people had left their countries for economic reasons. Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said their deportation would be done after the result of further investigation was known.
A second team from the Foreign Ministry in cooperation with the International Organization of Migration was sent to Sabang on January 28 to interview the people and based upon the initial result it was found that 17 of them were Bangladeshis while the rest were Rohingyas, a minority Moslem ethnic group in Myanmar.
Humanitarian agencies have called for the protection of the Rohingyas and advised against sending them back to Myanmar as they might be treated inhumanly there.
Amnesty International has urged the Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai governments to ensure that wherever they were to be deported to, their human rights would not be violated.
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