An Indonesian search and rescue ship yesterday rescued dozens of Rohingya refugees from a capsized wood boat off the coast of Aceh, underscoring the peril of the ocean journeys from Bangladesh.
In response to a report from The Related Press, which had a photographer aboard the Indonesian vessel, 59 individuals had been saved by the search and rescue ship yesterday afternoon, and an extra 10 had been picked up by native fishing boats.
The AP quoted a rescue officer as saying that the vessel had “managed to evacuate all 69 individuals and nobody acknowledged that anybody had died.” An additional six Rohingya had been rescued by non-public fishing boats nicely earlier than the official rescue mission arrived on the scene, bringing the overall of these rescued to 75.
The AP interviewed one 17-year-old survivor, who stated that these aboard had departed from the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh, the place round 1 million Rohingya have languished since a violent expulsion marketing campaign launched by the Myanmar army in August 2017.
In response to the survivor, the boat started to flounder three days previous to its rescue, earlier than capsizing on Wednesday. An official search and rescue crew set off from Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh on the western tip of Sumatra, on Wednesday night. When rescuers lastly situated the boat at noon yesterday, they discovered the refugees perched on its hull, determined for assist. Because the company reported, “Males, girls, and kids, weak and soaked from the night time’s rain, wept because the rescue operation obtained underway and other people had been taken aboard a rubber dinghy to the rescue boat.”
Boats have been issuing forth from Bangladesh and Rakhine State in Myanmar for greater than a decade, however have elevated markedly for the reason that Myanmar army’s 2017 “clearance operation,” which drove greater than 700,000 Rohingya civilians from Rakhine State into Bangladesh. Most are in search of sanctuary in different elements of Southeast Asia, significantly in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia, regardless of dealing with an more and more hostile reception in each nations.
This week’s near-disaster off the coast of Aceh underscores the hazards inherent within the journeys, which may solely be undertaken for a couple of months per yr however even then stay extraordinarily perilous. Final yr, 569 individuals died or went lacking whereas crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the best demise toll since 2014, in response to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee company. This translated into round one in eight of these enterprise the ocean crossings.
In asserting the dire statistics, UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh described the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal as “one of many deadliest stretches of water on the earth.”
The truth that individuals would like to take this opportunity than stay within the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar displays the widespread crime and lack of prospects within the camps, and the vanishingly small likelihood of returning to their former houses in Rakhine State. Certainly, the quantity trying such crossings has elevated markedly over the previous few years. Final yr, almost 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them girls and kids — launched into sea journeys, most from the refugee camps in Bangladesh. This got here after an estimated 3,545 individuals undertook perilous sea voyages in 2022, itself a fivefold enhance on 2021, when round 700 individuals made related journeys.
These numbers seem set to extend. In response to UNHCR, the “dignified and sustainable return [of refugees] to Myanmar stays the first resolution” to the refugee disaster in Bangladesh. However because the Worldwide Disaster Group (ICG) acknowledged in a report launched in November, the prospect of this taking place any time quickly is slim, given the continuing civil conflict inside Myanmar and the broad lack of belief that the majority refugees have towards the army regime in Naypyidaw.
On the similar time, situations within the camps of Cox’s Bazar are solely worsening, with the ICG figuring out waning worldwide assist, a purposefully punitive Bangladeshi coverage towards Rohingya refugees, and rising violence and prison exercise, as the primary elements. For rising numbers of Rohingya, all of this has made perilous ocean journeys look like the most effective accessible choice.