500 Bangladeshis, Rohingyas rescued off Aceh Another human trafficker killed in ‘gunfight’ in Cox’s Bazar [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

500 Bangladeshis, Rohingyas rescued off Aceh Another human trafficker killed in ‘gunfight’ in Cox’s Bazar

Local May 11, 2015

After the grim discovery of mass graves in jungles in Thailand, rescuers on Sunday brought ashore nearly 500 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, mostly Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims, after their boat arrived off Aceh in northwest Indonesia, reported news agencies.About 70 ‘mass graves’ of illegal migrants, most of them reportedly from Bangladesh and Myanmar, were found in Thailand’s jungles in the last few days.
‘We received a report from fishermen this morning that there were boat people stranded in the waters off north Aceh,’ Aceh provincial search and rescue chief Budiawan was quoted by Agence France-Presse.
‘We despatched teams there and evacuated 469 migrants who are Rohingyas from Myanmar and Bangladeshis. There are women and children among them. So far, all of them are safe,’ he added.
He said the group would be taken to a detention centre in north Aceh district, where police and immigration officials would carry out ‘further processing’ which would include investigating their motives.
Darsa, a disaster management agency official who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told the news agency that the group had arrived near a beach in north Aceh district early Sunday and were told to swim to shore.
‘One of the migrants who could speak Malay told me that their agent had told them they were in Malaysia, and to swim to shore,’ he said.
‘Some of them did. But later they found out from fishermen that they were in Indonesia,’ he added.
According to the migrant, five boats had departed from Myanmar last week to escape the conflict in their country, Darsa said.
Darsa said there were 83 women and 41 children on board. One of the women was pregnant and some of the children were aged under 10.
Bangladeshis along with thousands of Muslim Rohingyas have braved the dangerous sea crossing from Myanmar to southern Thailand and beyond in recent years.
Attacks on the religious minority by Buddhist mobs in the last three years have sparked one of the biggest exoduses of boat people since the Vietnam War, sending 100,000 people fleeing, according to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, which has monitored the movements of Rohingyas for more than a decade, according to Associated Press.
Though their first stop has in the past been Thailand, where the Rohingyas waited in jungle camps while brokers collected hefty ‘ransoms’ from family members before allowing them to continue their journeys onward, tactics have changed in recent months.
A trans-national racket of human traffickers has been engaged in luring an increasing number of fortune-seekers from Bangladesh into their trap and taking them to Thailand by boat for ultimate destinations in Malaysia and beyond dodging border guards.
Local agents of the racket target poor villagers from different districts here offering them good jobs abroad at ‘minimum costs’ and arrange the dangerous sea-crossing, according to officials.
An estimated 25,000 Rohingyas and Bangladeshis boarded people-smugglers’ boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, said the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
Meanwhile, another ‘human trafficker’ was killed in a ‘shootout’ with police at West Sonarpara of Ukhiya upazila in Cox’s Bazar on Sunday, New Age correspondent reported.
The deceased was identified as ZJafar Alam alias Zafar Mazi, 38, son of Zahir Ahmed of West Sonarpara village under the coastal Jaliapalong union in Ukhiya.
Police said a group of human traffickers numbering seven to eight had gathered in Sonapara sea beach area around 2:00am and were planning to send people to Malaysia by sea from Sonarapara Rezo terminal.
At that time a police patrol reached the spot and came under attack from the human traffickers. Police returned fire in self-defence.
On Friday, three persons were killed during a shootout in Teknaf upazila. The police claimed all of them were human-traffickers on a list prepared by the home ministry.
Captain Shahidul Islam, the East Zone commander of Bangladesh Coast Guard, told New Age on Sunday evening that they had intensified vigilance and were guarding all points from where trawlers sail with migrants on board.
‘We are searching every fishing trawler to check whether people are being trafficked…,’ he added.