Around 250 people, including children, were feared missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
“The trawler, which departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was on its way to Malaysia, reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas, and overcrowding,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war in their country. They travel by sea, often aboard makeshift boats.
The Rohingya on board this latest boat were likely leaving huge camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where more than a million refugees forced to flee Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine live in squalid conditions.
Rakhine state has been the scene of fierce fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic minority rebel group, over control of the territory.
The exact circumstances surrounding the latest incident were unclear, but preliminary information indicated that the vessel was carrying some 280 people and left Bangladesh on April 4.
The Bangladesh Coast Guard (BCG) said one of its ships, which was on the way to Indonesia, managed to rescue nine people from the sea, including one woman, on April 9.
“The Bangladeshi flag carrier MT Meghna Pride … spotted several people floating in the sea using drums and logs and rescued them from deep waters near the Andaman Islands,” BCG spokesman Lieutenant Commander Sabbir Alam Sujan told AFP.
‘Burned by oil’
Forty-year-old Rafiqul Islam, one of the survivors, told AFP that he was lured onto the boat by traffickers who promised him a job in Malaysia.
“A number of us were kept in the holding area of the trawler, some died there. I was burned by oil that spilt from the trawler,” he said, adding that the vessel travelled for four days before it capsized. “We floated for nearly 36 hours before a ship rescued us from deep water.”
Relatively affluent Malaysia is home to millions of migrants from poorer parts of Asia, many of them undocumented, working in industries including construction and agriculture.
But sea crossings, facilitated by human trafficking syndicates, are hazardous and often lead to overloaded boats capsizing.
UNHCR said the latest incident reflected the “dire consequences of protracted displacement and the absence of durable solutions for the Rohingya”.
“This tragedy is a reminder of the efforts urgently needed to address the root causes of displacement in Myanmar and create conditions that would allow Rohingya refugees to return home voluntarily, safely and with dignity,” it said.
The Andaman Sea stretches along the western shores of Myanmar, Thailand and the Malay Peninsula.
Last year, the UNHCR said that 427 Rohingya were feared dead at sea in two shipwrecks off the Myanmar coast in May.
