Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Feb 22: A boat carrying nearly 90 Rohingya, including women and children, has suffered a break down at sea near Andamans, and at least eight people have died, a rights group and the UN refugee agency said Monday.
Members of the persecuted Muslim minority regularly try to make perilous boat crossings to Malaysia to escape vast refugee camps in Bangladesh.
The vessel is believed to have departed Bangladesh on February 11 with 90 people on board, including 65 women and girls, it is learnt.
But it suffered breakdown after a few days, had run out of food and water and was now drifting in the Andaman Sea close to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, online news agencies reported.
“As per our last coordination with the refugees at 3PM IST, currently the Indian Navy has reached to them with emergency help including food, water and medicines. Unfortunately, it’s has been confirmed that 8 refugees died on the boat,” Rohingya Human Rights Initiative mentioned in a tweet today. However the number of dead people has not been confirmed yet by Indian agencies.
The refugee agency has called for “immediate action…. to save lives and prevent further tragedy.
Rohingya are originally from mostly Buddhist Myanmar but about 750,000 fled over the border to Bangladesh following a 2017 military crackdown, and now live in the world’s biggest refugee camps.
Many have made the sea crossing to Malaysia, which is home to a large Rohingya community and where they can find work in low-paying jobs such as construction.
But the journeys are often long and harrowing, with migrants facing abuse and beatings by traffickers, and many die en route.
It has also become more difficult for them to reach Malaysia in the past year as authorities stepped up patrols of the country’s maritime border due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Andaman Sheekha tried to contact ANC command, Coast Guard and Police for a comment in this regard but officials of none of the agencies were available for a comment.
