THE worldwide concern for the fate of 12 teenage Thai footballers and their young coach trapped deep in a cave system by flood water has been quite remarkable. Besides elite Thai Navy Seals, the rescue effort has included, Australian, American, Belgian and British caving experts. On Monday, it was two divers from the UK who located the cold, hungry and frightened group fully four kilometers inside the cave system, sheltering on a ledge to which they had been driven by rising water levels.

Ever since the young footballers had gone missing nine days earlier, the authorities had insisted there was a good chance they were still alive, despite a lack of food and, as the first pictures to emerge of them after they were found, being woefully ill-prepared.

There will be time enough to examine the insanity of leading these young men into caves which, although dry at the time, were known to flood quickly and were bound to do so given the forecast of heavy rain later that day. For the moment the focus is on a complex rescue, made the more difficult because it appears that none of the teenagers can swim. Worse, more heavy rains are forecast. So while it appears feasible, as a Thai army commander suggested, that the children could be fed and protected underground for the four months of the monsoon, the appalling reality is that their current refuge could also be inundated.

Media teams from around the world are now gathered around the cave entrance, sweltering in the high humidity and 30 degree temperatures. Food from the royal kitchen is being sent to the trapped children as well as the rescuers. Telephone and power links are being run into the cave. Desperate though the situation is, if it does end in tragedy, it will not be because the Thai authorities are sparing the slightest effort.

Nevertheless, the massive international focus on the fate of these young Thais is in stark contrast to the relatively limited attention the world is still giving to the desperate plight of the Rohingya Muslims a few hundred miles away. These brutalized people are being driven from their homes by Buddhist bigots while the government on Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi looks the other way.

Numbers of the Rohingya seeking to flee to the friendly refuge of Malaysia have been trapped by human traffickers who were supposed to be smuggling them through Thailand. The Thai police have uncovered the jungle graves of refugees murdered by the men they had paid handsomely to lead them to safety. But human rights campaigners believe that the full extent of this scandal has not been uncovered, in part because it involves government officials as well as members of the security forces.

Sadly, the media’s “news values” mean that after their initial coverage, even of some of the greatest enormities such as Myanmar’s savagery toward its Muslim minorities or the terrorist depravities of Daesh (so-called IS), the reporters and cameramen pack up and move on, even though the horrors do not end. The Thai cave drama, like 2010 rescue of 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days is a much easier for journalists to cover, because it has drama and suspense and it is clear that, in the foreseeable future, it will end either in jubilant celebrations or tearful tragedy.