'Many people died in front of me': hundreds of Rohingya stranded on refugee boats in Bay of Bengal

The Telegraph  

By Jennifer Rigby

3 May 2020 •
UN warns of a 'human tragedy of terrible proportions' if no action is taken to help refugees still floating hopelessly on the open sea 

Shomshu Alom, 18, was one of the survivors on a boat with hundreds of Rohingya refugees which was rescued by the Bangladesh coastguard two weeks ago Credit: Ro Yassin Abdumonab

Shomshu Alom, 18, spent 53 days at sea.

Drifting on a fishing trawler that was teeming with other desperate refugees, he watched his friends die in front of him, starved, and was forced to drink sea water to survive.

Rohingya refugees sent to remote Bangladeshi island after weeks at sea

The Guardian 
Rebecca Ratcliffe
Bangkok and agencies
Sun 3 May 2020

Hundreds more refugees still stranded on boats after being turned away by Malaysia 

A boat carrying Rohingya refugees is detained in Malaysian territorial waters off the island of Langkawi on 16 April. Photograph: Maritime Enforcement Agency Handout/EPA 

 
Rohingya refugees believed to have spent weeks stranded on cramped boats at sea have been sent to a remote, uninhabited island by Bangladesh, while hundreds more remain adrift.

Dozens of Rohingya landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh on Saturday, an official said, with some sent to Bhasan Char, a silt island in the estuary of Bangladesh’s Meghna river.

'Stranded' Rohingyas land on Bangladesh coast

THE STRAITSTIMES
2020.05.02

Rohingya refugees are seen in Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on March 24, 2020.PHOTO: AFP

COX'S BAZAR (AFP) - Dozens of Rohingya refugees believed to have come from two boats stranded at sea for weeks as they tried to reach Malaysia landed on the Bangladesh coast on Saturday (May 2), Rohingya community leaders said.

Bangladesh has refused to let the two trawlers carrying about 500 people land on its territory despite UN calls to allow them in as a powerful storm bears down on the region.

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims Stuck at Sea in Refugee Crisis With ‘Zero Hope’

The New York Times
By Hannah Beech
May 1, 2020


At least three boats carrying Rohingya refugees have been adrift for more than two months. As of this week, rights groups that had been tracking the boats lost sight of them.

The belongings of Rohingya refugees lying on the shore last month as their boat remained anchored nearby in Teknaf, Bangladesh.Credit...Suzauddin Rubel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BANGKOK — Somewhere in turquoise waters, perhaps where the Bay of Bengal meets the Andaman Sea, wooden boats filled with Rohingya refugees are listing, adrift now for more than 10 weeks.

They were prevented from docking in Malaysia, their preferred destination, and Bangladesh, their port of origin. As of this week, rights groups that had been trying to track the boats by satellite lost sight of them. Each boat — there were at least three — carried hundreds of Rohingya Muslims desperate for sanctuary and at the mercy of human traffickers.

Home minister: Malaysia sent Rohingya boat away with food as borders closed due to Covid-19

malaymail 

Thursday, 30 Apr 2020 BY IDA LIM

A boat carrying suspected ethnic Rohingya migrants is seen detained in Malaysian territorial waters, in Langkawi April 5, 2020. — Reuters pic

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 — Malaysian authorities turned away a boat with ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar only after providing them with food to continue their journey elsewhere, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin said today.

Hamzah was referring to a recent news report of the Royal Malaysian Navy intercepting a boat carrying about 200 Rohingya that was spotted 70 nautical miles away from Langkawi, with the crew of a navy ship providing food to them on humanitarian grounds before ensuring the boat left the country’s waters.

COMMENT | Rohingya issue – my heart was never bleeding

malaysia kini

OPINION

S Thayaparan

Do not sabotage the government’s effort in curbing Covid-19 in the name of ‘human rights’. Does our country have the resources and capacity to accommodate these refugees?”

- MCA vice-president Tan Teik Cheng

COMMENT | The “plight” of the Rohingya has somehow united the far-right and progressive elements in social media, and the vitriol against the community – online at least – has brought out allegations of scapegoating and pleas for “empathy” for this community.

 

The PN’s government move to deny a boatload of “Rohingya” refugees from entering Malaysia is a good start as far as I am concerned, but using the excuse of the coronavirus pandemic as some sort of prophylactic against charges of “inhumane treatment” is complete horse manure, if you ask me.

Solving Solving Rohingya crisis takes a global effort, burden shouldn’t fall on Malaysia’s shoulders alone, says HadiRohingya crisis takes a global effort, burden shouldn’t fall on Malaysia’s shoulders alone, says Hadi

malaymail  

BY DANIAL DZULKIFLY

Monday, 27 Apr 2020 

General view of a Rohingya settlement in Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur April 24, 2020. — Picture Hari Anggara

KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — The humanitarian crisis that has plagued the Rohingya people needs to be dealt with via an international effort rather than Malaysia solely bearing the burden, said PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang.

In an exhaustive Facebook posting today, Hadi explained that while Malaysia has done its fair share by aiding refugees, it cannot continue an open-door policy as it could be seen as facilitating the “oppressive” acts of the Myanmar government towards the Rohingya people.

Bangladesh urged to open ports to allow in Rohingya refugee boats

The Guardian
Rebecca Ratcliffe
South-east Asia correspondent
Mon 27 Apr 2020

More than 500 stranded on trawlers in what UN calls ‘human tragedy of terrible proportions’

A boat carrying suspected Rohingya refugees off the island of Langkawi, Malaysia. Earlier this month, Bangladesh rescued a boat that had been left adrift for two months after attempting to reach Malaysia. Photograph: Maritime Enforcement Agency Handout/EPA

The Bangladeshi government has been urged to open its ports and allow two boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees to come ashore so they can be given urgent medical care, food and water.

UN requests Bangladesh to let in 2 boats carrying 500 Rohingyas

Dhaka Tribune
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
April 25th, 2020

File photo: Rohingya refugees who were rescued by Bangladesh Coast Guard in Teknaf upazila of Cox's Bazar on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 Dhaka Tribune

No more Rohingyas will be allowed in, the foreign minister said on Wednesday

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has requested the Bangladesh government to allow two boats carrying around 500 Rohingyas in the Bay of Bengal to anchor in port.

These two boats have been trying to reach the shores of Bangladesh from the international waters since Monday. Bangladesh Navy and Bangladesh Coast Guard are not allowing them into the country.

Rohingya refugees rejected everywhere as countries grapple with COVID-19 concerns

TheJakataPost

Dian Septiari
The Jakarta Post

Rohingya refugees get in a truck following their arrival by boat in Teknaf, Bangladesh, on April 16. (AFP/Suzauddin Rubel ) 

As countries scramble to contain the spread of COVID-19 in their territories while prioritizing the well-being of their citizens, Rohingya refugees are again facing widespread rejection. Hundreds are currently stranded at sea in the Bay of Bengal.

Nearby countries have tightened border controls to slow the COVID-19 outbreak, and refugees have become an issue that no country wants to deal with.

Rohingya refugees stranded at sea show urgent need for regional response

AMNESTY

INTERNATIONAL 

22 April 2020,

Bangladesh

The Bangladesh authorities should rescue and welcome Rohingya refugees currently stranded at sea, Amnesty International said today. Other governments must fulfil their shared responsibility to carry out search and rescue efforts, in line with their international obligations to protect life, and allow safe disembarkation of refugees and asylum seekers at sea.

UNHCR expresses concern over failures to disembark vessels carrying Rohingyas

The Daily Star 
April 23, 2020 
Star Online Report

The UN Refugee Agency has expressed deep concerns over the reported failures of some nations to allow entry to some vessels carrying Rohingya refugees recently.

It did not mention the number of such vessels, but sources say two boats carrying some 500 Rohingyas have been in adrift in the sea for the last couple of weeks as Malaysia and Thailand have refused entry to those.

HRW urges Bangladesh to allow Rohingya stranded on boats to come ashore

bdnews24.com 
News Desk, bdnews24.com
26 Apr 2020

File Photo: A boat carrying suspected ethnic Rohingya migrants is seen detained in Malaysian territorial waters, in Langkawi, Malaysia April 5, 2020. Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency/Handout via REUTERS

The Bangladesh government should immediately allow hundreds of Rohingya refugees stranded in two trawlers in the Bay of Bengal to come ashore, Human Rights Watch has said.

The stranded Rohingya need necessary food, water, and health care, the human right group said in a statement on Saturday, citing a UNHCR warning that the Rohingya may have been at sea for weeks without adequate food and water.

Rohingya stranded at sea, Bangladesh says not its responsibility

Aljazeera  

Faisal Mahmud

2020.04.25

Rights groups urge Dhaka to allow some 500 Rohingya stuck in the Bay of Bengal to come ashore.

According to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, the stranded Rohingya might "have been at sea for weeks without adequate food and water" [EPA-EFE/Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency handout]

Dhaka, Bangladesh - The Bangladesh government has refused to allow some 500 Rohingya refugees stranded on board two fishing trawlers in the Bay of Bengal to come ashore, drawing criticism from rights groups.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told Al Jazeera on Saturday that the Rohingya refugees, who are believed to have been at sea for weeks, are "not Bangladesh's responsibility."

အိမ္မက္ဆိုး ခရီးကေန ငတ္မြတ္ေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ ေတြကို ကယ္တင္။

SBS ၿမန္မာ
2020.04.18

ဘဂၤလာေဒ့ရွ္ ကမ္းေျခေစာင့္တပ္က မေလးရွားကိုမေရာက္ဘဲ ပင္လယ္ျပင္မွာ ငတ္မြတ္ ေမၽွာေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ ၃၉၆ ေယာက္ကို ကယ္တင္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။

ယၡင္ကလည္း မေလးရွားကို သြားဘို႔ႀကိဳးပမ္းရင္း လမ္းေပ်ာက္၊ ပင္လယ္ျပင္မွာေမၽွာေနတဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡ သည္ ၄၀၀ ကိုလည္း ဘဂၤလာေဒ့ရွ္ ကမ္းေျခေစာင့္တပ္က ကယ္တင္ခဲ့ရပါေသးတယ္။


လင့္၊https://www.sbs.com.au/language/burmese/audio/starving-rohingya-refugees-rescued-after-nightmare-journey

Bangladesh coast guard rescues 396 Rohingya from drifting boat; 32 dead

REUTERS

Ruma Paul

April 16, 2020

 

DHAKA (Reuters) - At least 32 ethnic Rohingya died on a ship that drifted for weeks after it failed to reach Malaysia, officials of the Bangladesh coast guard said on Thursday, following the rescue of 396 starving survivors.

Rohingya refugees who were rescued by Bangladesh Coast Guard, sit on the shore in Teknaf, subdistrict of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh April 15, 2020. Picture taken April 15, 2020. Abdul Aziz/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

 

For years, Rohingya from Myanmar have boarded boats organised by smugglers in the hope of finding refuge in Southeast Asia, usually making voyages during the dry season from November to March, when the waters are calm.

Nearly 400 Rohingya Rescued from Boat Drifting Off Bangladesh Coast

VOA

VOA News

April 16, 2020 

FILE - In this March 24, 2020, photo, Rohingya refugees wait in a relief distribution point at a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

At least 382 Rohingya refugees have been rescued off the coast of Bangladesh after drifting for several days aboard an overcrowded fishing boat.

Officials with Bangladesh’s coast guard said the boat was spotted late Wednesday and brought ashore. Video footage taken by a local journalist showed a crowd of mostly women and children looking emaciated as they were helped off the boat.

Malaysia: Hundreds of Rohingya seeking safety by boat at acute risk from coronavirus

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Source :Amnesty
10 April 2020

The Malaysian authorities should ensure that the 202 Rohingya people found adrift off the country’s coast are spared the risk of mass infection in detention facilities, said Amnesty International Malaysia today.

The group is currently in 14-day quarantine in response to the outbreak of COVID-19.

“The government must ensure adequate protection for these Rohingya people, who are in desperate need of safety from both persecution and illness,” said Preethi Bhardwaj, Amnesty International Malaysia’s Interim Executive Director.

Malaysian authorities hold 202 Rohingya from boat off Langkawi

Aljazeera
2020.04.06

The Rohingya were detained after they were found on a wooden boat off the northwestern resort island. 

A photo made available by the MMEA on April 5 shows the wooden boat carrying more than 200 Rohingya off the island of Langkawi [MMEA via EPA]

Malaysian authorities have detained more than 200 ethnic Rohingya, including five children, after they intercepted a boat off the coast of the northwestern island of Langkawi.

The wooden vessel was found adrift just over one nautical mile (2.2 kilometres) from one of the island's luxury beach resorts on Sunday morning, the Malaysian maritime enforcement agency said in a statement.

Nine human traffickers arrested over capsized Rohingya boat

AsiaNews.it
BANGLADESH
02/14/2020

The 13-meter vessel had at least 138 refugees on board. Over the past two years, 25,000 Rohingya have attempted to leave the camps and 713 have been rescued at sea. The preferred routes are to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Dhaka (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Bangladesh police have arrested nine alleged human traffickers connected to the recent wreck of the overcrowded boat of Rohingya, during which 15 refugees died and many others remain missing. The arrests have taken place in the past two days in the southern district of Cox’s Bazar, where most of the tent cities hosting the refugees are located.