A group of Rohingya share their experience of how they were brutally beaten by their traffickers and in order to survive the thirst on a four-month journey at sea they resorted to drinking their own urine.
About a 100 survivors, mostly women and children, described a frightening story. They claimed that human smugglers whom they had paid to transport them had badly beaten the Rohingya who were later moved to a new boat and eventually abandoned in the middle of the sea. They were left alone to float away with no guidance whatsoever. The smugglers were charging each person about $2,300 to get them to Malaysia.
They were luckily rescued by a group of fishermen in Indonesia last week and pulled to shore by locals.
“We suffered so much on that boat,” 50-year-old Rashid Ahmad (survivor) told the reporters at an immigration detention centre in Lhokseumawe city on Sumatra’s northern coast.
“They tortured us and cut us. One of us even died. There was food at first but when it was done they (the traffickers) took us onto another boat and then let us float away alone.”
Another survivor, Habibullah, said: “They beat everyone badly. My ear was cut and I was beaten on the head.”
Survivor Ziabur Rahman Bin Safirullah, aged 35, said they managed to eat small rations of rice and nuts while relying heavily on rainwater to survive. “Sometimes we squashed wet clothes and drank the water from them,” he said, adding that those who died were thrown into the sea.
Korima Bibi (survivor) went on to explain that at least two people died during the voyage and that some onboard resorted to drinking urine to stay alive, as others got sick from the rough seas.
They set off from the Balukhali refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, but were originally from Myanmar’s conflict-torn Rakhine State.
A spokesperson for the group went on to share that one woman had died on the way, leaving behind her two children.
Another three children, two of them siblings, and a 10-year-old girl were unaccompanied. The group also included a pregnant woman.
They also had to stay on the boat an extra night even after reaching the shore because they had been refused entry to Thailand due to COVID-19 fears.
