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COX BAZAR, Bangladesh / BANGKOK (Reuters) – Rohingya refugee Shahab Uddin thought the wooden trawler he boarded in February would be his ticket to a camp in Bangladesh for a better life in Malaysia.
Instead, the trip almost killed him.
The 20-year-old was among nearly 400 survivors pulled out of the water, hungry, emaciated and traumatized after the ship failed to arrive in Malaysia and drifted for weeks before returning to Bangladesh in mid-April.
Hundreds of more refugees are stranded on at least two other trawlers, human rights groups say, as Southeast Asian governments tighten borders to prevent the new coronavirus, threatening to repeat a 2015 boat crisis when hundreds of people died. .
The United Nations has implored authorities to allow ships to disembark, but anti-refugee sentiment is mounting in Malaysia and governments say the borders are sealed to prevent the coronavirus.
In interviews with Reuters, seven survivors of the rescued boat recalled two terrible months.
Estimates of the number of people who died on the ship ranged from several dozen to more than 100, no one counted, but their accounts were consistent.
The survivors described hundreds of men, women, and children huddled in the boat, unable to move, squatting in the rain and scorching sun until, when they ran out of food and water, they began to starve, thirst, and beat up, their bodies shook. the water. Some cried as they spoke.
“I thought I wouldn’t come home alive,” Uddin said. “I missed my family, especially my parents.”
The Fortify Rights group said in a statement last week that the ship’s operators “kept their victims in conditions similar to slavery for the purpose of exploitation.”
Reuters was unable to identify or contact the crew for comment.
Amnesty International called on governments to protect the stranded Rohingya and allow them to land. An estimated 800 more people were at sea. Several dozen people from a ship landed on the southern coast of Bangladesh on Saturday.
Malaysia defends its policy of rejecting ships. Authorities have legally acted to defend the country’s sovereignty and are ready to do so again, its internal affairs minister said in a statement Thursday.
More than a million Rohingyas, members of a Muslim minority in Myanmar, live in camps in southern Bangladesh after fleeing the largely Buddhist Myanmar state of Rakhine.
Most fled an army offensive in 2017 that, according to the United Nations, was carried out with genocidal intent. Myanmar denies the genocide and says it was responding to insurgent attacks.
‘BEST IN MALAYSIA’
Although the Rohingya people trace their ancestry in Rakhine centuries ago, Myanmar says they are illegal immigrants from South Asia.
For years, the Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh have fled by boat to Thailand and Malaysia when the seas are calm between October and April. Hundreds died in 2015 after an offensive in Thailand that led smugglers to abandon their human cargo at sea.
In Bangladesh, Uddin made a bit of money driving motorized tuk-tuks, but said that refugees were increasingly confined.
The government restricts access to the internet and cell phones and has begun to put barbed wire fences around the camps, citing security. Uddin said it started to feel like a prison.
“I thought going to Malaysia by any means would at least save me. Many have come to Malaysia and are doing better.”
He said that he and several friends met a man in a poor neighborhood who took them by boat to a trawler where hundreds of people were already crowded on board: men on the lower deck, women on top. Many of the young women were to be married in Malaysia.
Another refugee, Enamul Hasan, also 20, said an uncle in Malaysia urged him to go there. “I wanted to go to Malaysia to end my family’s poverty,” he said.
Six of the seven survivors interviewed by Reuters said they had left voluntarily. The seventh, 16, said he was taken by unknown men against his will.
The misery began as soon as they left.
“We ate almost nothing,” said Uddin. “Young children would cry for water.”
I cry and pray
After a week, the ship arrived in Malaysia, where it waited for several days before the crew said they could not disembark and would have to return to Bangladesh.
They crossed the Bay of Bengal again.
“We faced storms three times,” Uddin said.
He said he was made to serve as the crew’s executor and hit anyone who got out of line. “If I didn’t want to beat them, I would be beaten myself,” he said.
Meanwhile, some desperate passengers began to drink sea water.
“By the wonderful grace of God, the water would seem sweet,” Hasan said.
“Many jumped into the water … everyone said that it was much better to die in the water than to die on the boat.”
At night, the passengers hugged each other, crying and praying.
Finally, the ship stopped again, off Myanmar, survivors said, but was again unable to dock.
“People were still dying and would be thrown overboard,” Hasan said. “I started wondering when I would die.”
The refugees finally forced the captain to take them back to Bangladesh where, one night, they made landfall.
A Coast Guard official there at the time said they were a shocking sight: “Many of them were thin, some unable to stand up.”
Muriel Boursier, chief of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Bangladesh, who met with survivors later, said many were unable to walk. Some wept for lost family members, staring blankly.
Some survivors were taken to the hospital, but most went to a quarantine camp, unaware of the coronavirus that had seized them during their journey.
“It is difficult to understand that no state can open its doors,” said Boursier.
Uddin said his parents barely recognized him, but that he was grateful to return, although he had little hope for his future.
“It is better to die here than to die at sea,” he said.
(Reporting by Suza Uddin, Poppy McPherson; Additional reporting by Ruma Paul in Dhaka, Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur; Writing by Poppy McPherson; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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