Malaysia turned away two vessels carrying hundreds of migrants while one boat turned up Thursday in Thai waters, as critics accused Southeast Asian governments of playing a game of "human ping pong" with the lives of desperate boatpeople.

Malaysia and Indonesia have vowed to bar ships bearing desperate migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh who are flooding into Southeast Asia, triggering warnings that the hardline approach could endanger thousands at sea.

Poverty-stricken and loathed at home, Myanmar's Rohingya are one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- yet their dire situation has long been ignored in Southeast Asia. 

The Muslim community's friendless status angers activists, who say that regional negligence can now be counted in lives lost as a wave of migrants find themselves in desperate straits at sea.

A free speech group launched a blistering attack on Sweden on Wednesday after it denied a travel visa to a secular Bangladeshi blogger who was then hacked to death by suspected Islamists.

Swedish PEN, which defends freedom of expression, slammed the refusal as "horrific" and said it would demand an explanation from the authorities, claiming Ananta Bijoy Das would be still alive if the visa had been granted.

Bangladesh discovered 116 nationals, some sick from a lack of food, adrift in a fishing trawler in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday after being abandoned by smugglers en route to Malaysia, officials said.

A joint navy and coast guard patrol boat detained the trawler near Bangladesh's southernmost island of St. Martin's close to the border with Myanmar, an official said.

Muhammad Shorif, a 16-year-old Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar, dreamed of one day being a doctor. After fleeing a dismal upbringing in a refugee camp, he embarked on a dangerous sea voyage, only to find himself stranded on Indonesia's farthest shores.

The teenager had hoped to reach Malaysia where he would join his uncle, receive an education and start a new life far from the discrimination he suffered in his homeland.

A masked gang wielding machetes hacked a secular blogger to death Tuesday in northeastern Bangladesh in the third such deadly attack by suspected Islamists since February.

Police said Ananta Bijoy Das was murdered in broad daylight as he headed to work at a local bank in the city of Sylhet, an attack that fellow writers said highlighted a culture of impunity.

Thousands of migrants believed to be stranded at sea without food and water could die unless Southeast Asian governments act urgently to rescue them, migrant groups and the U.N. warned Tuesday.

Underscoring the concern, a migrant organization said a vessel was adrift somewhere near the Thai or Malaysian coast with around 350 people -- including women and children -- but no food or water, while Thailand called a regional summit on the issue.

Myanmar authorities on Monday described Bangladesh as "the root" of the migrant crisis facing the region, after hundreds of people -- many from the Muslim Rohingya minority -- were found adrift at sea.

Nearly 2,000 people from Myanmar and Bangladesh had been rescued or swum to shore in Malaysia and Indonesia by late Monday, after people smugglers apparently abandoned them in boats.

They washed up on Indonesia's far west coast "sad, tired and distressed" after a treacherous high-seas journey: hundreds of Rohingya migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, with children in tow, in search of a better life.

They were never supposed to wind up in Indonesia's Aceh region, said one Muslim Rohingya aboard the wooden boat which arrived at the weekend.

Nearly 2,000 boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been rescued or swum to shore in Malaysia and Indonesia, authorities said Monday, warning that still more desperate migrants could be in peril at sea.

The spate of arrivals comes as Thailand, a key stop on a Southeast Asian people-smuggling route, cracks down following the discovery of mass graves that has laid bare the extent of the thriving trade.