32 Rohingya dead, 396 rescued after boat drifts at sea for weeks

DHAKA • At least 32 Rohingya died on a ship that drifted for weeks after it failed to reach Malaysia, officials from the Bangladesh Coast Guard said yesterday, following the rescue of 396 starving survivors.

For years, Rohingya from Myanmar have boarded boats organised by smugglers in the hope of finding refuge elsewhere in South-east Asia, usually setting out in the dry season from November to March, when the waters are calm.

A human rights group said it believed more boats carrying Muslim-minority Rohingya were adrift at sea, with coronavirus lockdowns in Malaysia and Thailand making it harder for them to find refuge.

"They were at sea for about two months and were starving," a coast guard official told Reuters in a message, adding that the ship was brought to shore on Wednesday.

The 396 survivors would be handed to the United Nations refugee agency, said the official. Video images showed a crowd comprised mostly of women and children, some stick-thin and unable to stand, being helped to shore.

One refugee told a reporter the group had been turned back from Malaysia twice and a fight had broken out on board between passengers and crew at one point.

"We understand these men, women and children were at sea for nearly two months in harrowing conditions and that many of them are extremely malnourished and dehydrated," said the refugee agency UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

"UNHCR is offering to assist the government to move these people to quarantine facilities," it added in a statement in which it also offered medical attention. Media reports that the group was infected with the coronavirus had not been substantiated, the agency said.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognise Rohingya as citizens, and they face severe curbs on freedom of movement as well as access to healthcare and education.

Myanmar denies persecuting Rohingya and says they are not an indigenous ethnic group but immigrants from South Asia, even though many of them trace their ancestry back centuries in Myanmar. More than a million live in refugee camps in southern Bangladesh, the majority having been driven from their homes in Myanmar after a 2017 military crackdown the army said was a response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.

Human rights groups fear virus curbs across South-east Asia could trigger a repeat of a 2015 crisis, when a crackdown by Thailand prompted smugglers to abandon their human cargo at sea on crowded, rickety boats.

Ms Chris Lewa, director of The Arakan Project, said she believed several more boats were stranded. "Rohingya may encounter closed borders supported by a xenophobic public narrative," she said in a message. "Covid-19 cannot be used to deny access to territory to desperate refugees in distress."

People were being smuggled out by boat and over land, said Mr Kyaw Hla, a Rohingya from Sittwe in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, where tens of thousands of Rohingya have been confined in camps since a bout of violence in 2012. "Within these eight years, there has been no progress, only degradation," he said by telephone. "If the coronavirus breaks out here, we'll be as good as dead."

REUTERS