Over 100 missing after illegal migrant boat sinks off B'desh
3 November CNN
As many as 130 people may have drowned off the coast of southern
Bangladesh after a boat carrying passengers trying to illegally get into
Malaysia sank in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladeshi authorities said
Thursday.
The accident appears to be the tragic result of an annual migration
of thousands of people along dangerous, clandestine routes operated by
criminal gangs. Details have only recently begun to emerge about the
sinking, which happened early Sunday, according to Lt.-Col. Zahid
Hassan, the commander of the Bangladeshi border guard battalion in
Teknaf, the area from which the boat is believed to have departed. Italy
rescuers search for dozens feared missing from migrant boat. Just six
survivors have been recovered by Bangladeshi authorities from the 136
people reported to have been on the vessel, Hassan said. Authorities are
seeking nine people identified as operators of the human trafficking
ring that organized the boat trip, he added.Most of the people on board
are believed to have been Bangladeshi, according to Hassan. But some,
including three of the survivors, were Rohingya, Muslim people from
Rakhine state in Myanmar, or Burma.
After lethal clashes this year between Rohingya and Buddhist
residents of Rakhine, thousands more have tried to escape across the
border only to find their path blocked by Bangladeshi authorities who
say there are already too many refugees in the country.
Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Bangkok-based NGO
focused on Rohingya issues, said that local contacts told her another
seven survivors from the boat sinking had been found on the Myanmar side
of the border.The survivors were taken to the town of Maung Gaw by
fishermen, she told CNN. The fishermen also reportedly found six bodies,
including two women, who they believe to be victims of the boat
accident.
Lewa said local sources told her that boats chartered by relatives of
the victims had also seen 40 bodies floating at sea on the Burmese side
of the border, roughly 20 miles south of Bangladesh.However, fishermen
are too frightened to retrieve the bodies because they fear questioning
by Burmese authorities, she said."That is the unfortunate state of the
situation there now," she said. "There is a chance that there may be
many survivors on fishing boats but most are likely to go back into
hiding as they are too frightened to come forward." More than 230,000
Rohingya refugees are estimated to be living in camps in Bangladesh, but
only about 30,000 of them are officially registered. The refugees began
arriving in large numbers in the early 1990s, fleeing what they said was
persecution by Myanmar's military rulers at the time.
Teknaf, from where the boat is said to have set off, is on the banks
of the Naf River, which forms the border between Bangladesh and Rakhine.
The people who are willing to pay traffickers operating the illegal
sea routes to Malaysia tend to be impoverished Bangladeshis seeking to
earn better money abroad and Rohingyas who see no way to build a life in
Bangladesh, said Dirk Hebecker, the head of the U.N. Refugee Agency's
office in Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh."We consider this journey extremely
risky," Hebecker said. "It is usually young males between 18 and 35 who
take to the boats and leave their families behind in Bangladesh."
The U.N. agency estimates that between 50 and 150 people leave
Bangladesh by boat each week, and the number may even have risen as high
as 200 per week recently. Due to the clandestine nature of the
departures, there is no systematic data collection.Bangladeshi
authorities believe that Rohingyas account for between 10% and 20% of
the passengers on such journeys, Hassan said.
Hassan said the boat that sank Sunday went down after water filled
its engine casing though a crack apparently caused by a collision with
an undersea rock, citing the account given by one of the survivors to
Bangladeshi authorities. It was on its way to meet up with a larger ship
that would illegally transport the passengers to Malaysia, he said.The
journey usually takes between four and five days, depending on the boats
and the navigation skills of the boat crews, according to Hebecker.
The occupants of those boats that do make it to Malaysia or Thailand,
another possible destination often either end up in exploitative labor
arrangements or detention, Hebecker said. "They have no official
documents as they are smuggled into these countries, and often have to
cover substandard accommodations and food at low wages," he said.
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