Staff Repoeter, AW :
01 May 2017:
30 Rohingya refugees were rescued by Sri Lanka’s coastguard Sunday from a detained Indian boat which had illegally entered the island’s territorial waters. The rescued Rohingya refugees includes 16 children who were on board, an official of Srilankan Coastguard said on Sunday.
The dhow operated by two Indians had detained while entering Sri Lanka’s northern waters after crossing the sea border, said navy spokesman Chaminda Walakuluge.
“The coastguard noticed that there were very small children on board and escorted the dhow to a port and provided them with emergency assistance,” Walakuluge told AFP.
The rescued efugees were seven men, seven women and 16 children were aboard, in addition to the two Indian crew who had been detained pending investigations.
“There was a 15-day-old baby and a four-month-old child on board,” Walakuluge said. “We have taken them to port and provided food and medical attention.”
“It appeared that the passengers had left India, where they had lived for about four years as refugees”, he added.They were handed over to local authorities to decide further action. Investigators suspect that the crew were trying to board these Rohingya Refugees to Sri Lanka.
The Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine are denied citizenship and face brutal discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country.Thousands have sought refuge in different countries of the world. About 70 thousands of refugees took refuge in neighboring Bangladesh to escape inhuman persecutions comitting by the Burmese security forces after the October last year. Indiscriminate killings, destruction and burning of Rohingya houses and gang rapes of Rohingya teenagers and women are the daily phenomen in Arakan. The UN Human Rights Council accused Burma of comitting Crimes Against Humanity in its Annual meeting last March.
The United Nations Human Rights Council last month agreed to send a fact-finding mission to Myanmar to investigate claims that police and soldiers carried out a bloody crackdown on the Rohingya in Rakhine.
More than 120,000 Rohingya have languished in grim displacement camps ever since bouts of religious violence between Muslims and Buddhists ripped through the state in 2012.Most are not allowed to leave the squalid encampments, where they live in dilapidated shelters with little access to food, education and health care.
Four years ago Sri Lanka’s navy rescued 138 refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar whose boat had been drifting off Sri Lanka for over 10 days.
[Source:AFP]
