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21-12-2024
KOLOMBO: More than 100 Rohingya refugees from war-torn Myanmar have been rescued while adrift on a fishing trawler off the Indian Ocean island nation by Sri Lanka’s navy, bringing them safely to port.
The 102 people, including 25 children, were taken to Sri Lanka’s eastern port of Trincomalee, a navy spokesman said on Friday.
“Medical checks have to be done before they are allowed to disembark,” the spokesman said.
The Muslim-majority ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar and thousands risk their lives each year on long sea journeys, the majority heading southeast to Malaysia or Indonesia but fisherman spotted the drifting trawler off Sri Lanka’s northern coast at Mullivaikkal at dawn on Thursday.
The navy spokesman said on Friday that language difficulties had made it hard to understand where the refugees had been headed, suggesting that “recent cyclonic weather” may have pushed them off course.
While unusual, it is not the first boat to head to Sri Lanka, which is about 1,750km (1,100 miles) across open seas southwest of Myanmar.
In October, six people died as nearly 100 Rohingya landed by boat in Indonesia’s Aceh province in one of the latest waves of arrivals from Myanmar.
The Sri Lankan navy rescued more than 100 Rohingya refugees in distress on a boat off their shores in December 2022.
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.
Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup and a grinding civil war since then has forced millions to flee.
The Rohingya have borne the brunt of the latest fighting because they have been forcibly drafted into the army despite not being recognized as citizens.
Myanmar‘s war-ravaged Rakhine state could face imminent famine according to a new United Nations report, which estimates that more than two million people could be at risk of starvation.
“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” said a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report released late on Thursday.
It projected “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity are left unaddressed in the western state bordering Bangladesh that is home to the stateless Rohingya community.
Some two million people are at risk of starvation, UNDP added.
Rice production in Rakhine has declined due to shortages of seeds and fertilizers, severe weather and the displacement of people who can no longer farm, the agency said. “Rakhine stands on the precipice of an unprecedented disaster,” the UNDP said in its report.
“Combined with the near-total halt of trade, over two million people are at risk of starvation,” it added.
“Without urgent action, 95 percent of the population will regress into survival mode.”
Aid agencies including the Red Cross have faced severe difficulties in assessing humanitarian needs and delivering aid due to restrictions from Myanmar’s military government.
Reporting from Bangkok, journalist Tony Cheng said that the region is currently only able to produce 20 percent of the food that it needs.
“At the centre of this crisis are the Rohingya…those who are lucky enough, have been able to escape the borders, into Bangladesh. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
