‘It was like a killing field in the sea’: Indonesian fishermen at front lines of migrant crisis

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The call on the fisherman's radio was urgent. "There are a lot of people in the sea. Please come over immediately to help save them."

It was accompanied by a set of GPS coordinates pointing to a spot in the Malacca Strait some 60 kilometres off the northern coast of Indonesia's Sumatra. Pawang Saiful was among the fishing captains pulling tuna and Spanish mackerel from waters nearby. When the radio call came through at 5 p.m., he ordered his 30 crew to haul in the nets. By 9 p.m., in the darkness of a calm sea, he had arrived at the designated coordinates, where his boat lights picked out hundreds of heads bobbing in the water, clinging to life. Some were men with children on their shoulders. The blackness echoed with the sound of their desperate yelling: "Allahu Akbar" – "God is great."

"It was like a killing field in the sea. I could never have imagined anything like it," said Capt. Saiful, 40.

He had suddenly found himself at the heart of an international crisis that has drawn south-east Asian countries into a politically contentious debate over what to do with thousands of people fleeing persecution and poverty in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Fishermen have played a central role in the drama, saving the 1,822 boat people brought to Indonesian shores, some of them after four months at sea. Without the fishing boats, the people in the water "would all have been dead," in a day at the most, says Capt. Saiful.

But the politics of the new boat people are so pointed that his good deeds have been met with punishment rather than gratitude. Police have harassed him and the other boat captains, questioning them repeatedly and suddenly tightening enforcement of rules in ways that make it more difficult for them to make a living.

Some of the fishermen have concluded that if they "find more boats in the sea, they won't help them," said Abdul Hadi, 35, a fisherman who helped bring the rescued to shore. "We don't want to have any problems with the police if we help them."

The fishermen's troubles come as the leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand brace for thousands more migrants to come their way. Though the Malacca Strait seems empty of refugee boats right now, aid workers say many more are marshalling in the Bay of Bengal near Myanmar as monsoon season descends.

"They're going to make one last push," said Amy Smith, executive director with Fortify Rights, who was in Rohingya parts of Myanmar late last week before coming to Indonesia. "This is the tail end of the sailing season, so if boats are going to come over, it's going to be particularly dangerous."

That suggests a new cohort of desperate faces may arrive in the waters where, as night deepened on May 14, Pawang Ibrahim, 42, directed his fishing boat crew to pull out those they could. Soon 20 vessels were there alongside his. Capt. Ibrahim had trouble processing what he was seeing. He thought to himself: "who has done this to these people?"

Almost none of the floating men had the strength to climb aboard themselves. Most were dressed in only thin shorts, though some were stark naked. A few had ugly wounds inflicted by fellow passengers who had stabbed them with long knives to steal their food. One man had his eye crushed in its socket by the fighting.

The fishermen acted fast, but "as we were pulling them in, many people were sinking in the sea around us, drowning," Capt. Saiful said. He estimates nearly 200 people died. "It's very sad. We should have gone there earlier. But we didn't know."

As the men were lifted aboard, some of his crew set to work cooking every kernel of rice they had on board. They fried some of their catch, provided water and gave away their own clothes. When they had taken on roughly 200 – jamming the deck of Capt. Saiful's 80-foot boat, the Rahmat Baru, or "God's New Mercies" – he prepared to return to shore.

Then two of the rescued men told him many women and children remained on the water, in the boat that had carried them there, and it was sinking. The refugee boat had been split between Bangladeshi men and Rohingya from Myanmar, Muslims who included men, women and children. After the Thai navy provided children's food, fighting broke out when the Bangladeshis tried to seize it from the Rohingya men standing guard. During one of those fights, someone struck a hole in the bottom of the boat, causing it to rapidly take on water.

"All of the women and children were crying," said Rukiyah Khatun, 20, who was on the boat with a baby who was not yet 70 days old when they fled Myanmar two months before. "We thought we were going to die that day."

When Capt. Saiful heard Ms. Khatun and the others were still on the boat, he off-loaded the men he had already picked up onto other vessels, and went back for the women and children. He fed them, too, before delivering them to solid ground at Kuala Langsa, the mangrove-lined fishing town that is his home. He offered the boat people his food, his catch and his fuel without asking anything in return. "I can get that money back again from the gods when I go back to the sea. I believe they will help me get fish," he said.

But as dawn broke and he finished discharging the people from his boat – including grown men so weak they had to be carried to shore – he got called in by police. He had been up all night, but they wanted to question him immediately. The Indonesian government was not pleased its fishermen had brought refugees to shore.

That attitude has since partially changed, as Jakarta prepares for as many as 3,500 more migrants to come south from Myanmar. After initially saying it would reject them, Indonesia has now instructed its naval ships to assist them to shore if they are in Indonesian waters and ask to be brought in, foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said in an interview.

"But the details on how much further we would go – such as if the boats are in international waters – will be further discussed" in meetings planned early in the week, he said.

That means for now, the fate of the boat people may once again fall to fishermen – some of whom say, despite the problems they've encountered, they will act again if lives hang in the balance.

"Even if the government won't, I will rescue them," said Capt. Saiful. "They are human. We have to help other humans."