Indian Coast Guard Rescues 81 Rohingya on Drifting Boat
India’s coast guard found 81 survivors and 8 dead in a boat packed with Rohingya refugees adrift in the Andaman Sea, an Indian Foreign Ministry official said on Friday, adding that the survivors will not be allowed to enter. to Indian territory.
Another refugee disappeared, Foreign Ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said on Thursday when breaking news of the rescue.
The United Nations refugee agency had raised the alarm earlier this week over the missing ship, which departed on February 11 from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where refugee camps have been set up for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who fled. from neighboring Myanmar.
After four days at sea, the ship’s engine failed and those on board had run out of food and water, Srivastava said. Many were ill and extremely dehydrated when they were rescued.
Two Indian coast guard boats were dispatched to help the refugees, 23 of whom were children, and the Indian government is in talks with Bangladesh to ensure their safe return, he said.
India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which spells out the rights of refugees and state responsibilities to protect them. It does not have a national law to protect the more than 200,000 refugees it currently hosts, including some Rohingya from Myanmar.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after a deadly crackdown by security forces in Myanmar in 2017.
“Bangladesh is respectful of its international obligations under UNCLOS (the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea),” the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
On previous occasions, when other coastal countries in the region repeatedly denied access to Rohingya drifting at sea, it was Bangladesh that came to the rescue, the ministry added.
The statement said the ship had been tracked approximately 1,700 kilometers from Bangladesh and 147 kilometers from India.
“Other states, particularly those in whose territorial waters the ship has been found, bear the primary responsibility and must fulfill their obligation under international law and the principle of cargo sharing,” the ministry said.
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