02 March 2019•Update: 03 March 2019
By Md. Kamruzzaman
DHAKA, Bangladesh
Villagers in Malaysia found 35 Rohingya women and children stranded Friday along a beach in the country’s northernmost state of Perlis, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.
Human traffickers could have dropped off the group from neighboring Thailand, local and international media quoted Malaysian officials and local residents as saying.
“Based on information gathered by my officers who were at the scene, a group of illegal immigrants believed to be of Rohingya descent was found by the side of the road while another group was still in the sea and assisted to the shore by the public,” RFA quoted police chief Noor Mushtar Mohd as saying.
They might have been dropped off by a fishing boat before dawn on Friday, Mohd said, adding they had to march through the muddy shore during low tide before they met the villagers who aided them with food and new clothes.
“The Rohingya women and children were fed before they were handed over to immigration officers who transported them to the Belantik Immigration Office, about 134 kilometers (83 miles) south,” he added.
A spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kuala Lumpur, Yante Ismail, however, told local media that the agency would be in contact with Malaysian authorities to seek access to these individuals to assess their needs and humanitarian assistance.
On Thursday, Md Shahidul Haque, the foreign secretary of Bangladesh, the host country of more than 1.2 million Rohingya refugees, told the UN Security Council that the country would no longer be in a position to accommodate more Rohingya refugees.
“Today, without a legal identity, they are at the mercy of traffickers and drug dealers,” UN Humanitarian Envoy Ahmed Al Meraikhi said in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka on Feb. 27 following a two-day visit to Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar district.
According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017.
Since Aug. 25, 2017, nearly 24,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed by Myanmar’s state forces, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA).
More than 34,000 Rohingya were also thrown into fires, while over 114,000 others were beaten, said the OIDA report, titled "Forced Migration of Rohingya: The Untold Experience".
Some 18,000 Rohingya women and girls were raped by Myanmar’s army and police and over 115,000 Rohingya homes were burned down and 113,000 others vandalized, it added.
