Sabang,9/Jan/09.
After almost a month float on the high seas, 193 Muslim, Myanmar and Bangladesh were stranded at Sabang Beach. One of them, Mohammad Ovid, recount experiences that may not be able to forget throughout his life.
Reach the mainland is a yearning in that. So, once set foot on Sabang Beach Wednesday morning (7 / 1), flood gratitude and excitement can not be hold again. Many feelings inside their mind make dozens of this people fainted.
Not many among them who can speak English well as a means of communication so that the interrogation process was difficult. One of the lines of their face, that all men, the gratitude is successful because they touche the land once more.
Experience float for 28 days at sea really very imprint on their mind. One of them is the feeling of melancholy when should discard seven corpses of their colleagues to the sea. Their lives has taken away by a prolonged hunger.Experience that can make them so angry is not humane army action against them from Thailand army. All their identity taken and collected them into one in a small boat with no engine and let loose in the ocean.
Information submitted by the last direct Danlanal Colonel of Sabang Sea (E) Januar Hanwiyono on Wednesday said, the preliminary data obtained that the boat amounted to 193 people. Details, 20 people are Bangladesh citizan and the rest, 173 people, a Myanmar citizen.
Now they are a refugee status. "They originally intend to Malaysia. We are still developing other information related to their status at this time is that we declare as refugees," said Januar in quarantine location, Central Lanal, Sabang.
Among them, there are children who are aged 12 years old named Abdul Gofur and Nurul Haki. Both are youngest refugees who were stranded Sabang.