On December 1, 2022, a boat carrying about 180 Rohingya refugees set sail from Bangladesh for Indonesia. The ship carried babies, pregnant women and children fleeing escalating violence in refugee camps in Bangladesh. A week later the ship disappeared. The Associated Press used dozens of interviews, phone call recordings, photos and videos from the ship to reconstruct the passenger itinerary. The Associated Press reported that the ship sank in a storm a week after it began its voyage.
Human rights activists say what happened to those on board is the latest example of political inaction and global indifference to Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, the Rohingya. At least 348 Rohingya died or went missing while trying to cross the Bay of Bengal or the Andaman Sea last year, the highest death toll since 2014, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Still, UNHCR said repeated requests to maritime authorities over the past few months to rescue the ship in distress had been ignored.
A week after the passengers began their journey, a storm hit the Bay of Bengal. On December 7, Cetera Begum, a woman on Jamal’s boat, desperately called her husband, Muhamed Rashid, in Malaysia, using the ship’s satellite phone. Rashid recorded the call and shared it with the AP. In her recording, Cetera, who was traveling with her two teenage daughters, exclaimed: “O Allah, our ship has sunk! We are only half afloat! Please pray for us and tell our parents!” When asked where Rashid was, Cetera first said she was “Indonesia”, then checked with her passenger and she said “India”. Then she cries out, “O Allah, the waves have drowned it, the storm has drowned it!” The call is dropped shortly thereafter. Jamal’s boat was being chased by another boat carrying Rohingya refugees. The captain of the second boat, Kafayet Ullah, said he saw Jamal’s boat make a sharp turn in the waves and capsize. Mr. Cafayette heard people screaming.
Then the screaming stopped. The lights on Jamal’s boat went out. No traces of the passenger were found. Jamal’s boat wasn’t the only one to have trouble in recent months. However, the Rohingya aboard these shipwrecks were repeatedly abandoned and left to die by local governments. The boats often had satellite phones so officers knew exactly where they were. Nevertheless, UNHCR said the region’s maritime authorities have repeatedly ignored his requests to rescue some of the ships. The government ignores the Rohingya because it can ignore them. Several international laws mandate rescue of ships in distress, but enforcement is difficult. Chris Rewa, director of the Arakan Project, which monitors the Rohingya crisis, said coastal states in the region have in the past run into troubled boats that have forced them into other countries’ search and rescue zones. . But now they rarely look.
Lucky fishermen are eventually towed to the shores of Indonesia by local fishermen. But even rescue can be dangerous. A Vietnamese oil company rescued the boat and quickly handed over the Rohingya to the same dangerous regime in Myanmar who had been fleeing. John Quinley, director of human rights group Fortify Lights, said there was no reason local governments could or could not coordinate the rescue of these boats. “It was a complete lack of political will and an extremely ruthless act,” he said. “Responsibility and accountability really belongs to everyone.”
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