25,000 Bangladeshis, Rohingyas trafficked through Bay of Bengal in 3 months: UNHCR

Around 25,000 Rohingyas and Bangladeshis boarded smugglers' boats from the Bay of Bengal between January and March this year, almost doubling the number over the same period in 2014, says a UNHCR periodic report released yesterday.

According to interviews of those who have reached Thailand and Malaysia, 300 people are estimated to have died at sea this year and 320 others in the last three months last year as a result of starvation, dehydration and beating by boat crew, the report adds.

"Between 40 to 60 percent of 25,000 people are thought to have originated from the Rakhine State of Myanmar, although many of them embarked on the ships from Bangladesh," the report says.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has prepared the report to oversee irregular maritime movement in Southeast Asia.

Considering the growing scale and severity of boat exodus, the UN body calls on countries in the region to work more closely together to counter smuggling and trafficking of vulnerable people.

An increase in irregular maritime movement has been attributed to a variety of factors, including more Bangladeshis embarking on smugglers' ships, and political developments in Myanmar, it observes.

"Individuals who departed by sea have increasingly said they were able to set sail having only been agreed to pay between $90 to $370 for the entire journey or, in some cases, were told they could board for free and pay later with earnings to be made in Malaysia," the report claims.

Several individuals described being lured to a boat by the prospect of jobs in Malaysia, even small cash inducement, and an option to return home upon seeing the conditions, but they were forced by smugglers to remain aboard.

Unless they later escaped, all individuals ultimately had to pay much larger amounts to be released from the smugglers' camps in Thailand.

In the first quarter of this year, UNHCR interviewed more than 150 recent maritime arrivals in Thailand and Malaysia who had departed since October 2014 on boats that cumulatively carried an estimated 7,000 passengers.

According to the interviews, there has been a slight increase in the proportion of female passengers leaving from the Bay, from 10 percent in the first three quarters of 2014 to 14 percent in the last quarter of the same year.

Rape by crew members and smugglers was also reported by the female interviewees, who are either themselves victims or know of others, who were raped occasionally on board but more frequently and repeatedly at the smugglers' camps in Thailand.

The extensive network of and rising competition among smugglers manipulating the Bay routes were evidenced by several individuals who said they were transferred between up to six boats before reaching shore.

Smugglers identified each passenger for whom they were to be compensated by tying plastic colour bands around their wrists, and separating them according to wristband colours upon reaching Thailand.

The Thai authorities have since unearthed mass graves with dozens of bodies believed to be those of smuggled Rohingyas and Bangladeshis.

The Malaysian authorities apprehended as many as 137 Rohingya and Bangladeshi individuals, some of whom had been chained by the legs and scalded with hot water, either shortly after they had entered overland from Thailand or, in one case, as dozens were disembarking from a fibreglass boat off Sungai Padang beach.

Conditions in the smugglers camp are horrific. People are held and abused until their relatives pay for their release. More than half of the survivors interviewed by UNHCR since October witnessed someone's death at the smugglers' camps where they were held.

The UNHCR in its report recommends law-enforcement measures be accompanied by efforts to reduce the need for migrants and refugees to turn to smugglers in the first place by, among others, addressing the root causes driving them to undertake these dangerous journeys and providing safe alternatives for              them to access asylum and protection.