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| Rohingya boats sink off west Burma - many missing | | |
Burma: Some time last night, between 100 and 200 people tried to move by boat from the Nget Chaung IDP camp, near Pauktaw, to safer ground. According to aid agencies, only one of the boats had a motor; it was towing the other two. Dozens of people are still unaccounted for after the accident.
The camp houses nearly 8,000 displaced Rohingya Muslims, in an unsanitary location on flat, waterlogged soil, very exposed to the weather.
It has presented relief workers trying to improve the living conditions of the IDPs with formidable challenges. With Cyclone Mahasen bearing down on it, evacuating the IDPs is now a matter of urgency.
Burmese authorities say they are moving some of the 130,000 displaced Rohingyas to safer places. Aid agencies believe more than 13,000 have been moved - but that leaves many more stuck in unprotected, makeshift camps.
Human Rights Watch has criticised the government for failing to assist all the vulnerable camps. It points out that Rohingyas are still restricted from moving by officials or by fear of attack by the Buddhist population.
International agencies have been pleading for months with the Burmese government to address the plight of the IDPs, but little has been done. The local Rakhine Buddhist population views the 800,000 or so Rohingyas as illegal immigrants and wants them expelled, a view shared by many other Burmese. No other country is willing to take them. Now they are about to bear the brunt of a powerful storm.
Only one boat in the convoy had an engine, towing the other two smaller vessels. Reports say the vessels were overcrowded.
Barbara Manzi, head of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told the BBC from Sittwe that search-and-rescue operations were ongoing.
She said that it appeared that the boats "left the camp with the blessing of the authorities before hitting rocks".
Earlier reports suggested that up 200 people were on board, but the UN later revised the number to about 100.
Burmese officials began evacuations this week, after warnings the cyclone might hit neighbouring Bangladesh from Thursday, bringing heavy rain and flooding to western Burma.
This could hit an estimated 140,000 displaced people - mostly Rohingya - who are living in makeshift shelters in Rakhine, aid groups say.
They have been displaced since violent clashes between Rakhine's Muslim and Buddhist communities in June and October 2012.
"The government has been repeatedly warned to make appropriate arrangements for those displaced in Rakhine state," Isabelle Arradon, deputy Asia Pacific director of the rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement on Monday.
"Now thousands of lives are at stake unless targeted action is taken immediately to assist those most at risk."
Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said that if the government failed to evacuate those at risk, "any disaster that results will not be natural but man-made".
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