About 250 people are missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, according to the UN’s refugee and migration agencies. The trawler, which had departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh bound for Malaysia, reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas and overcrowding, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.
The vessel was carrying more than 250 men, women and children. Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war, often on makeshift boats. The people onboard were likely leaving the huge refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where over a million Rohingya live in squalid conditions after being forced to flee Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
The Bangladesh Coast Guard reported that one of its ships rescued nine people from the sea on 9 April, including one woman. Survivor Rafiqul Islam told Agence France-Presse he was lured onto the boat by traffickers promising 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 spilled from the trawler,” he said, adding that the vessel travelled for four days before capsizing and that they floated for nearly 36 hours before rescue.
The UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration called the incident “a devastating human cost of protracted displacement” and urged the international community to increase funding for life-saving assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and support for host communities. In 2017, a military offensive in Myanmar forced at least 730,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, with a UN fact-finding mission concluding the crackdown included “genocidal acts”. Myanmar has denied the allegations.
