At least five people are believed to have died aboard a boat carrying some 160 Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia, according to family and activist sources.
The refugees, from the Kutupalong and Balukali refugee camps in Bangladesh, began their 3,000-km journey on November 25, but have been stranded off the coast of Thailand since their boat broke down on December 1, the sources said.
Activists said that relatives of the victims last had direct contact with them via satellite phone five days later, at around 3am on Tuesday. At that point, five people had already died, they said.
“They were crying for help and said they had run out of food and water,” said Rohingya activist Mahamaad Zuwa Khan, adding that all but 40 of the refugees were women and children.
Rohingya refugee Ata Ulla, 52, told Myanmar Now that his 17-year-old son Maw Sharaf was among those now facing death at sea.
“He went on the boat without telling us. We only found out after he had already left,” he said, adding that his son had been desperate to continue his education.
Maw Sharaf and his family were among hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled their homes in northern Rakhine State in 2017 to escape “clearance operations” by the Myanmar military.
Forced to live in crowded Bangladeshi refugee camps, many Rohingya are prepared to risk their lives—and pay enormous sums of money—in the hope of improving their prospects by fleeing to Malaysia.
The going rate for overland travel to the country is 500,000 Bangladeshi taka ($4,870), but for 350,000 taka ($3,400), human traffickers can arrange passage aboard boats that are often less than seaworthy.
“Once he had boarded the boat, they told my son to ask me to transfer the money to their account. I’ve already sent them 150,000 taka, and I was supposed to give them the rest when he reached Malaysia,” said Ata Ulla.
“The agent himself lives in Malaysia, but they never clearly stated their names,” he added.
According to Ata Ulla, the agent claimed to have spoken to Maw Sharaf on Thursday morning. However, Myanmar Now could not confirm this information, and all attempts to reach the satellite phone number have been unsuccessful.
Aung Kyaw Moe, a Rohingya activist who is also a human rights advisor to Myanmar’s publicly mandated National Unity Government, attributed the exodus to extremely poor living conditions inside refugee camps.
“Life in a Bangladeshi refugee camp is not so different from life in Rakhine State [for the Rohingya]. They lack basic human rights in both places, so I can assure you that they are not just looking for a more ‘profitable’ place to live. They just want to be able to live with human dignity,” he said.
The Rohingya have been denied citizenship in Myanmar for decades, and have been subject to restrictions on almost all aspects of their lives in the country, from marriage and education to land ownership and freedom of movement.
Since 2012, they have also been targeted by increasingly violent pogroms by the military and extreme nationalists.
There have been a number of incidents over the past week involving Rohingya attempting to reach other parts of Southeast Asia.
On Monday, 13 Rohingya men and boys were found dead on the side of a road on the outskirts of Yangon after apparently being dumped there by human traffickers. Police sources said they believe the victims died of asphyxiation while being transported in an enclosed vehicle.
The previous day, 78 Rohingya were arrested after they were discovered aboard a boat near Wel Kali, a village in Mon State’s Mudon Township. Several of them were taken to the state capital Mawlamyine for questioning, sources there told Myanmar Now.
In a statement released on Thursday, the Myanmar regime said that a ship operated by the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise rescued 154 people the night before from a boat that was adrift off the coast of Myeik in southern Tanintharyi Region.
The statement identified the people as “Bengalis”—the junta’s term for the Rohingya—and said that they were handed over to the Myanmar navy.
