About 250 missing after boat carrying Rohingya refugees capsizes in Andaman Sea

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 agencies said the trawler carrying more than 250 men, women and children reportedly sank due to harsh weather and overcrowding. It had departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was bound for Malaysia.

“The trawler … reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas and overcrowding,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday.

Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war in the country. They travel by sea, often on makeshift boats.

The people onboard this boat were probably leaving huge camps in Cox’s Bazar in south-east Bangladesh, where more than a million refugees forced to flee Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine live in squalid conditions.

Rakhine 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 about 280 people and left Bangladesh on 4 April.

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 9 April.

“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,” the BCG spokesperson Lt Cdr Sabbir Alam Sujan told Agence France-Presse.

“This tragedy highlights the devastating human cost of protracted displacement and the continued absence of durable solutions for the Rohingya,” said the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration.

For years, many Rohingya people have embarked on unsafe wooden boats to try to reach neighbouring countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, in an attempt to flee persecution in Myanmar or overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Rafiqul Islam, one of the survivors, told AFP he was lured on to 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 spilled from the trawler,” said Islam, 40, 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.”

The agencies called on the international community to increase and sustain funding for life-saving assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as well as support for Bangladeshi host communities.

In 2017, Myanmar’s armed forces launched an offensive that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh, where they recounted killings, mass rape and arson. A UN fact-finding mission concluded the 2017 military offensive had included “genocidal acts”.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has denied genocide, and says the UN mission was not objective or reliable.

Agence France-Press and Reuters contributed reporting