DHAKA: Bangladesh is under “no obligation” to shelter 81 Rohingya Muslim refugees adrift for almost two weeks on the Andaman Sea and being assisted by neighbouring India, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen told news agency Reuters.
Indian Coast Guard (ICG) found the survivors and eight dead crammed on a fishing boat and were trying to arrange for Bangladesh to take them, Indian officials said on Friday.
Speaking at a videoconference briefing on 24 February, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said that on 11 February, a boat sailed from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh carrying 64 women including 8 girls and 26 men including 5 boys. “The engine of the boat failed on February 15 and since then it has been drifting. Due to the severe conditions, we understand that eight occupants have died and one of the occupants had been missing since February 15,” Srivastava said.
“When we learnt of the boat in distress, we immediately dispatched two coast guard ships to provide food, water and medical assistance to the occupants. Seven of them were administered IV fluids,” he added.
The spokesperson stated that around 47 of the boat’s occupants possessed identity cards issued to them by the UNHCR office in Bangladesh, which stated that they were displaced Myanmar nationals and person of concern to UNHCR registered by the Bangladesh government.
“We are in discussions with the Government of Bangladesh to ensure their safe and secure repatriation,” Shrivastava added.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Momen, however, told Reuters that Bangladesh expects India, the closest country, or Myanmar, the Rohingyas’ country of origin, to accept them. “They are not Bangladesh nationals and in fact, they are Myanmar nationals. They were found 1,700 km (1,100 miles) away from the Bangladesh maritime territory and therefore, we have no obligation to take them,” said Momen, who is in the United States.
“They were located 147 km (91 miles) away from Indian territory, 324 km (201 miles) away from Myanmar,” he said by phone, adding that other countries and organisations should take care of the refugees. “Has Bangladesh been given the global contract and responsibility to take and rehabilitate all the Rohingya or boat people of the world?” Momen said. “No, not at all.”
Momen said the UNHCR should also take responsibility as around 47 people on the boat hold ID cards from the UNHCR office in Bangladesh stating that they are displaced Myanmar nationals.
“If (the refugees) are UNHCR card holders, why did they allow traffickers to take their card holders to adrift on the high sea leading to death?”
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees from predominantly Buddhist Myanmar are living in teeming camps in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, including tens of thousands who fled after Myanmar’s military conducted a deadly crackdown in 2017.
Traffickers often lure Rohingya refugees with promises of work in Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia.
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, expressed alarm this week over the missing boat.
With agency inputs