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An Indonesian search and rescue ship yesterday rescued dozens of Rohingya refugees from a capsized picket boat off the coast of Aceh, underscoring the peril of the ocean journeys from Bangladesh.
In line with 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 a further 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 personal fishing boats effectively earlier than the official rescue mission arrived on the scene, bringing the full 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 navy in August 2017.
In line with the survivor, the boat started to flounder three days previous to its rescue, earlier than capsizing on Wednesday. An official search and rescue group set off from Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh on the western tip of Sumatra, on Wednesday night. When rescuers lastly positioned the boat at noon yesterday, they discovered the refugees perched on its hull, determined for assist. Because the company reported, “Males, girls, and youngsters, weak and soaked from the night time’s rain, wept because the rescue operation bought underway and folks 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 because the Myanmar navy’s 2017 “clearance operation,” which drove greater than 700,000 Rohingya civilians from Rakhine State into Bangladesh. Most are looking for sanctuary in different components of Southeast Asia, notably 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 might solely be undertaken for just a few 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 very best loss of life toll since 2014, based on UNHCR, the United Nations refugee company. This translated into round one in eight of these enterprise the ocean crossings.
In saying the dire statistics, UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh described the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal as “one of many deadliest stretches of water on this planet.”
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 probability 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, practically 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them girls and youngsters — 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 comparable journeys.
These numbers seem set to extend. In line with UNHCR, the “dignified and sustainable return [of refugees] to Myanmar stays the first answer” to the refugee disaster in Bangladesh. However because the Worldwide Disaster Group (ICG) acknowledged in a report launched in November, the prospect of this occurring any time quickly is slim, given the continued civil warfare inside Myanmar and the broad lack of belief that almost all refugees have towards the navy regime in Naypyidaw.
On the similar time, circumstances within the camps of Cox’s Bazar are solely worsening, with the ICG figuring out waning worldwide help, a purposefully punitive Bangladeshi coverage towards Rohingya refugees, and rising violence and legal exercise, as the principle components. For rising numbers of Rohingya, all of this has made perilous ocean journeys look like one of the best accessible possibility.
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