Malaysian maritime patrols on Monday scoured the Andaman Sea, searching for dozens of missing Rohingya refugees feared dead after their boat capsized off the country’s northwest coast, killing at least 11 people.
Police said the vessel, believed to be carrying members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority, went down near Langkawi Island late last week.
Langkawi police chief Khairul Azhar Nuruddin said hundreds of Rohingya had set sail for Malaysia two weeks ago before being divided into two smaller boats last Thursday.
The ongoing search – covering more than 255 square nautical miles (877 square kilometers) – has yielded 13 survivors and seven bodies so far.
Authorities estimate about 70 people were on the sunken boat, while the fate of a second vessel carrying roughly 230 passengers remains unknown.
Long persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the mainly Muslim Rohingya have faced intensifying violence at home and dire conditions in refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, where about 1.3 million live in overcrowded settlements.
In neighboring Thailand, officials said they had recovered four bodies, including two young girls believed to be among the Rohingya victims.
“The Thai navy and marine police have carried out additional inspections,” said Sakra Kapilakarn, governor of Thailand’s southern Satun province.
More than 5,100 Rohingya boarded boats to leave Myanmar and Bangladesh between January and early November this year, with nearly 600 people reported dead or missing, according to data from the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
In the last week of October, multiple boats carrying Rohingya left Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, from where it takes between a week and 10 days to reach Malaysian waters, said Chris Lewa, director of the nonprofit Arakan Project, which closely tracks such voyages.
The boats might also have stopped in waters off Myanmar to pick up Rohingya from inland areas of Rakhine State, where a raging civil war has worsened displacement, she said.
Among those who left Cox’s Bazar was Mohammed Ibrahim, 29, who boarded a boat for Malaysia on Oct. 26, according to his elder brother, Mohammed Younus.
“He left for Malaysia without telling anyone,” Younus told Reuters from the refugee camp, where he is frantically trying to learn his brother’s whereabouts. “If I had known, I would never have let him go. He has a wife and three children – a 3-year-old son and 10-month-old twin girls. Who will take care of them?”
Muslim-majority Malaysia has long been a favored destination for Rohingya fleeing persecution, although the country does not recognize refugee status.
In recent years, it has turned away boats and detained Rohingya as part of a crackdown on undocumented migrants.
Malaysian police said Monday that those rescued have been detained pending an investigation into potential immigration offenses.
The regional head of Malaysia’s maritime agency said air assets from both Thailand and Malaysia have been deployed to search for survivors.
“It will be easier for us and our sea assets,” Romli Mustafa told a news conference on Langkawi, referring to the use of Malaysian aircraft to support maritime patrols. He added that the search operation could last up to seven days.
Romli said the agency’s information indicated the Rohingya boat had initially departed from Rakhine State, which borders Cox’s Bazar, where sprawling refugee camps are located.
Of the 13 survivors, 11 were Rohingya and two were from Bangladesh, authorities said. In Thailand, officials said they recovered refugee cards issued in Bangladesh from the two children, identifying them as Rohingya from the Cox’s Bazar camps.
Some Rohingya say community members risk such perilous journeys because they see no future in Bangladesh, where foreign aid is shrinking, and are too afraid to return to Myanmar.
“People are desperate,” said Naser Khan, a Rohingya refugee in Cox’s Bazar. “People are dying in the fighting, dying from hunger. So some think it’s better to die at sea than to die slowly here.”
