The United Nations and the Bangladeshi police have said that on Saturday, almost 2 dozen Rohingya refugees went missing and were feared to have drowned after a boat carrying them capsized in the Bay of Bengal.
As per reports, the refugees had been trying to flee a remote Bangladeshi island, where several thousand of them had been relocated after previously residing in the crowded camps near the Myanmar border.
Several human rights groups and the U.N. had been critical of the relocation as they say that the island isn’t fit for habitation.
Reportedly, the island would be often submerged by monsoon rains, but the government has claimed that the island had been outfitted with protective sea walls, hospitals, mosques, and schools.
The U.N.’s refugee agency in a Facebook post said that on Saturday morning, i.e., August 14, the UNHCR was given an alert that a boat carrying about a dozen of Rohingya refugees had capsized close to Bhasan Char island overnight.
“We are devastated that reportedly many passengers, including women and children, have tragically drowned,” it said and also that the confirmed number wasn’t yet known.
Meanwhile, as per a report by The Associated Press, a police official in Noakhali district, where the island was located, said that almost 40 refugees including women and children were in a fishing boat, which sank due to bad weather.
Preferring anonymity, an official said that the refugees had been trying to flee the island. He also said that at least 14 refugees had been rescued by fishermen and were brought back to the island.
Bangladeshi fishermen had arrived on the scene first and had alerted the authorities, as per the U.N. It also said that the Bangladesh Navy and the Coast Guard had been leading the search and rescue operation.
The agency had said that they were seeking further information from the Government of Bangladesh and were also in touch with refugee communities both on Bhasan Char and in Cox’s Bazar, so as to support the authorities in further rescue efforts.
The island developed by Bangladesh’s navy in the Noakhali district is said to accommodate some 100,000 refugees. Authorities had claimed that they would relocate the refugees to the island in phases.
Over 700,000 Rohingya are said to have fled to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017 after a military crackdown on the Muslim ethnic groups, also followed by an attack by insurgents. The attack on the Rohingya has been termed as Ethnic Cleansing by the global rights groups and the U.N.