Malaysia detains 270 Rohingya refugees who had drifted at sea for weeks

B B C
9th June 2020

File photo of Rohingya refugees arriving in in Malaysian waters

Malaysia has detained nearly 270 Rohingya refugees whose boat had drifted offshore for nearly two months because of coronavirus lockdowns.

They fled southern Bangladesh in early April but had been unable to dock.

Dozens of those aboard jumped into the sea and tried to swim to land when their damaged trawler was intercepted by the Malaysian coastguard on Monday.

Rohingya refugee crisis: 'The bodies were thrown out of the boat'

B B C

By Swaminathan Natarajan and Moazzem Hossain 

BBC World Service

29 May 2020

Khadiza fled Myanmar after her husband and son were killed 

"Nobody knows how many people have died. It could be 50 or even more," recalls Khadiza Begum.

The 50-year-old was among 396 Rohingya Muslims who had tried to reach Malaysia but who finally returned to the Bangladeshi shore after the boat carrying them was stranded at sea for two months.

Her estimate on the number of deaths comes from the funerals her son officiated as an imam, a Muslim preacher, on the same boat.

The human smugglers never delivered them to their longed-for destination.

Rohingyas stranded at sea: IOM calls for rescue, safe disembarkation

Dhaka Tribune

Tribune Desk
May 28th, 2020

Rohingya refugees who were rescued by Bangladesh Coast Guard in Teknaf upazila, Cox's Bazar on Wednesday, April 15, 2020 Rohingya Photography Competition

 

For years, Rohingya have travelled by sea to Malaysia where they hope to find work and reunite with family members

International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said they are "increasingly concerned" about the plight of hundreds of Rohingyas believed to be stranded at sea, noting that cyclone Amphan signalled a ferocious start to the cyclone season in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

No ‘bitter end’ for Rohingya

ASIA TIMES

Christopher P Catrambone 
May 20, 2020

 A wooden boat carrying suspected Rohingya migrants detained in Malaysian territorial waters off the island of Langkawi on April 5. Photo: AFP/Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency 

When it comes to writing about the plight of refugees, one can often feel like a broken record. There is a disheartening sense that everything has been said, twice, and yet nothing changes for the better.

Indeed, there’s a kind of perverse Murphy’s Law at work. Every new twist marks an expansion of our understanding of the threshold for human misery, and of our capacity for failing our fellow man. This is particularly true for the Rohingya.

After Weeks at Sea, 277 Rohingya Land in Bangladesh

The New Yprk Times
By The Associated Press

May 8, 2020

DHAKA, Bangladesh — More than 250 Rohingya Muslim refugees who had been floating for weeks on a fishing boat in the Bay of Bengal arrived Friday on an island in southern Bangladesh, officials said.

The 277 refugees were taken to Bhasan Char island after they reached Bangladesh’s coast, said Mohammed Alamgir Hossain, police superintendent in Noakhali district where the island is located. He said the navy took them there after their boat was spotted.

ပင္လယ္ျပင္မွာ လနဲ႔ခ်ီေမ်ာပါခဲ့တဲ့ ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြ ရဲ႕ ေျပာျပခ်က္

VOA

ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)

05 ေမ၊ 2020
နန္းေလာင္၀္

ပင္လယ္ျပင္ကို စက္ေလွေတြနဲ႔ျဖတ္ၿပီး ထိုင္း၊ မေလးရွား ႏိုင္ငံေတြကိုသြားဖို႔ ႀကိဳးစားၾကတဲ့ ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡ သည္ေတြ ရင္ဆိုင္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေအၾတ့အႀကဳံေၾတကို ႐ိုက္တာသတင္းဌာနက ေမးျမန္းထားတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကို နန္းေလာင္ဝ္ ေျပာျပေပးမွာပါ။
လင့္၊https://burmese.voanews.com/a/rohingya-boat-people/5405545.html

လှေစီးပြေး ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေကို ဒေသတွင်းနိုင်ငံတွေ ကူညီဖို့ EU တိုက်တွန်း

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာပိုင်း)
04 မေ၊ 2020

Langkawi ကျွန်းရှိ မလေးရှားပိုင်နက်အတွင်းမှာ တွေ့ရတဲ့ လှေစီးပြေး ရိုဟင်ဂျာတချို့ (ဓာတ်ပုံ - AFP PHOTO / MALAYSIAN MARITIME ENFORCEMENT AGENCY)

အမျိုးသမီးတွေနဲ့ ကလေးငယ်တွေ အပါအဝင် ရာနဲ့ချီတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာဒုက္ခသည်တွေ ပင်လယ်ပြင်မှာ ရက်သတ္တ ပတ်တွေနဲ့ချီ မျောပါနေတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေနဲ့ မကြုံရအောင် ဒေသတွင်းနိုင်ငံတွေ ဝိုင်းဝန်းကူညီကြဖို့ ဥရော ပသမဂ္ဂ (EU) က တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Watchdog concerned over ‘risky quarantine’ of Rohingya

AA
Md. Kamruzzaman 

DHAKA, Bangladesh

05.05.2020 

Bangladeshi minister defends sending 29 Rohingya refugees to remote island for quarantine 

A global human rights watchdog on Tuesday voiced concerns over safety of 29 Rohingya refugees, who have been quarantined at a remote island by Bangladeshi authorities.

“Bangladesh authorities have quarantined 29 Rohingya refugees without adequate access to aid on an unstable silt island in the Bay of Bengal,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Tuesday.

Concerns raised after Rohingya quarantined on Bangladeshi island

Aljazeera
5,May 2020

HRW says relocation of 29 Rohingya to flood-prone Bhasan Char island without access to aid poses risk to refugees.

Authorities said the 29 Rohingya were relocated to the controversial Bhasan Char island to prevent coronavirus outbreak in the refugee camps [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters]

Rights groups and aid agencies have raised concerns after dozens of stranded Rohingya refugees, who landed at Bangladesh's southern coast at the weekend, were sent to an inhabitable island in the Bay of Bengal.

Rohingya refugees sent to flood-prone Bangladesh island after months at sea

DW
2020.05.04

After being turned away by Malaysia, at least 500 Rohingya refugees facing persecution in Myanmar have spent two months at sea. Now one boat of 29 people has been sent to an "uninhabitable" Bangladeshi island.

After being turned away by Malaysia, at least 500 Rohingya refugees facing persecution in Myanmar have spent two months at sea. Now one boat of 29 people has been sent to an "uninhabitable" Bangladeshi island.

Rohingya tell of death at sea: Hundreds still adrift

REUTERS
Posted May 4, 2020
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh/BANGKOK (Reuters) - Rohingya refugee Shahab Uddin thought the wooden trawler he boarded in February would be his ticket out of a camp in Bangladesh to a better life in Malaysia.

 Rohingya refugee Shahab Uddin thought the wooden trawler he boarded in February would be his ticket out of a camp in Bangladesh to a better life in Malaysia.Instead, the voyage nearly killed him. Libby Hogan reports.

Instead, the voyage nearly killed him.

The 20-year-old was among almost 400 survivors pulled from the water, starving, emaciated and traumatized after the boat failed to reach Malaysia and spent weeks adrift before returning to Bangladesh in mid-April.

Nowhere to flee, Rohingya refugees are struggling to survive

Dhaka Tribune

Sayedullah, Kamal, Alom Shah
May 3rd, 2020

File photo of Rohingya women and children in a camp in Cox Bazar Mahmud Hossain Opu/ Dhaka Tribune

Instead of looking forward to a better, more peaceful future, Rohingya are starting to flee again. This time, they are fleeing from Bangladesh

In 2017, when the genocidal campaign in Myanmar forced the Rohingya across the border and into Bangladesh, we came seeking refuge and safety. The country opened its borders and its hearts to almost 800,000 Rohingya and we were grateful.

Dozens of Rohingya From Stranded Boat Land in Southern Bangladesh: Official Says

The New York Times

Reuters
May 2, 2020

DHAKA — Dozens of Rohingya believed to be from one of several boats stuck at sea landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh on Saturday, an official said, as concerns grew over hundreds stranded for weeks on trawlers because of coronavirus restrictions.

“A small boat carrying 43 people came to shore today,” the government official said, declining to be named because they were not authorized to speak to media.

Some of the arrivals were sent to Bhasan Char, a remote island off the coast where authorities previously planned to house Rohingya, the official said.

The anger against the Rohingya has roots

THE Star 
Saturday, 02 May 2020
WONG CHUN WAI

A boat with some 202 Rohingya people onboard arrived in Langkawi. -filepic

HE calls himself “Long Tiger” and has carved himself out a reputation as the most infamous Rohingya on social media, but a series of critical Facebook posts against Malaysians, particularly Malay-Muslims, has landed him in trouble.

There was an uproar against the 31-year-old man over his rants. His identity has been revealed, and with his list of criminal offences, it is perhaps only fitting that seeking fame on social media led to his real-life infamy being exposed.

Dozens of stranded Rohingya refugees land in Bangladesh

Aljazeera
3,May-2020

Officials say a small boat carrying about 40 people, including 'starving' children, came ashore in southern Bangladesh.

Belongings of Rohingya refugees lay on the shore as their carrier boat remains anchored nearby in Teknaf [File: Suzauddin Rubel/AFP]

Dozens of Rohingya believed to be from one of several boats floating in the Bay of Bengal for weeks have landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh, according to officials, as fears grow over hundreds of people stuck at sea on vessels because of coronavirus restrictions.

Security officials quoted by news agencies said on Sunday that a small boat carrying about 40 people, including "starving" women and children, had come ashore the previous day. 

'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.