Migrant boat capsizes near Malaysia

(Vatican Radio)  At least 14 people are dead and dozens missing after a boat thought to have been carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Malaysia. Like Europe, some nations in Southeast Asia have been trying to work out how to handle boat-borne migrants in unsafe vessels.

Listen to Alastair Wanklyn's report:

The boat capsized off Malaysia's eastern coast. It was thought to be carrying up to 100 people. Fifteen were reported rescued, and brought back to land by local fishermen.

In the port where they landed authorities set up a makeshift medical centre and said boats and an aircraft were searching for other survivors. Nearly all the dead found on the first day of searching were women.

Malaysian authorities said conversations with the survivors suggest the boat was carrying Indonesian migrants on their way home. Small boats regularly carry undocumented individuals across that stretch of water, as people flee Indonesia in search of jobs in wealthier parts of Southeast Asia.

This summer, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were at the centre of another migrants crisis, when people traffickers began abandoning boats carrying ethnic Rohingya adults and children.

Hundreds are presumed to have drowned, and those who made it to land reported starvation conditions at sea. Some said they had left Myanmar in the hope of reaching a Muslim nation.

The situation seems now to have improved, with no such boats being reported in the region in recent weeks.