The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called for the immediate rescue of a group of Rohingya refugees who are drifting away in their boat in the Andaman Sea without food and water, many of whom are ill and suffering from severe dehydration.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said he did not know the exact location of the vessel and understood that some of the passengers were dead. The boat left southern Bangladesh about ten days ago and experienced an engine outage.
“Immediate action is needed to save lives and prevent further tragedy,” UNHCR said in a statement, offering to support governments in providing humanitarian aid to the rescued.
A senior Indian Coast Guard official confirmed to Reuters that the boat had been located in an area off the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Map of Andoman and Nicobar Islands.
According to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan project, a group monitoring the Rohingya crisis, at least eight people have been killed.
Lewa said Indian naval vessels that were nearby provided food and water. “But we still do not know what they will do after that,” he added.
A spokesman for the Indian Navy did not provide details about the situation but said a statement would be issued later.
According to UNHCR, the boat departs from the Bangladeshi coastal district of Cox’s Bazar, where about a million Rohingya live in appalling conditions in sprawling refugee camps.
In Malaysia, a court has temporarily suspended the deportation of 1,200 Myanmar citizens, who were on the boats offered by the Myanmar army. The migrants included members of vulnerable minorities and were sent to a military base in western Malaysia to be loaded onto three boats for the journey home.
The United States and the United Nations have criticized the plan, calling on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide access to detainees to determine whether there are any asylum seekers.
The UN says it knows at least six are registered with them and need international protection.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 after a deadly repression by security forces in Myanmar.
Authorities in Bangladesh said on Monday that they were not aware of any boats leaving the camps. “If we had such information, we would have stopped it,” said Rafiqul Islam, an additional police superintendent at Cox’s Bazar.
Amnesty International said in a statement that too many lives had already been lost from countries that did not want to assist Rohingya people at sea.
“Another repeat of the disgraceful incidents should be avoided here,” said Saad Hammadi, Amnesty South Asia’s campaigner.
“After years of limbo in Bangladesh and after the recent coup in Myanmar, Rohingya people feel they have no choice but to undertake these dangerous journeys.”