DHAKA: Bangladesh officials said Monday
(Apr 2) a fishing boat carrying Rohingya Muslims to Southeast Asia did not set
sail from its shores, where close to one million refugees live in congested
camps.
Police in Bangladesh's southeast said
they were investigating after a boat moored at a Thai island with dozens of
Rohingya aboard, but were adamant their coast guard would have spotted the
vessel.
"The boat didn't leave from
Bangladesh," said Afrujul Haq Tutul, deputy police chief in Cox's Bazar
district where the Rohingya camps are located.
"But, in light of the news, we are
investigating this matter."
The boat, en route to Malaysia where
there is a sizeable Rohingya community, stopped at an island off the west coast
of Thailand early Sunday due to bad weather.
Thai officials said there were about 56
women, men and children on board and that the Rohingya would continue towards
their destination.
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Rohingya migrants attempting the boat
routes south have been a rare sighting since Thai authorities clamped down on
regional trafficking networks in 2015, leaving thousands of migrants abandoned
in open waters or jungle camps.
Since then successive waves of violence
in Myanmar have driven close to 800,000 Rohingya into southern Bangladesh,
where they have joined hundreds of thousands who fled previous bouts of
persecution.
Those who fled an army crackdown
described by UN and US officials as ethnic cleansing arrived to find squalid
camps and army blockades preventing them from leaving the immediate area in
Cox's Bazar.
Bangladesh's refugee commissioner,
Mohammad Abul Kalam, said local authorities had "no such information"
about Rohingya trying their luck once again on the open ocean.
"We don't have any such
intelligence about anyone leaving Bangladeshi shores for Malaysia by
boat," he said.
A senior coast guard official said it
was "impossible" that a captain would be able to evade patrols, which
have been stepped up in recent months to combat drug trafficking and prevent
people smuggling.
"They (boats) are not allowed to go
out. It would be very hard to sneak out of our coastal patrol. I don't think
these people sailed away from here," coast guard spokesman Abdullah Al
Maruf told AFP.
Many of the Rohingya ensnared in the 2015 boat crisis
wound up in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia as Thailand stuck to a
policy of not accepting the vessels.
Source: AFP/zl
