Dec 21 (Al Jazeera) – More than 100 Rohingya refugees from war-torn Myanmar have been rescued while adrift on a fishing trawler off the Indian Ocean island nation by Sri Lanka’s navy, bringing them safely to port.
The 102 people, including 25 children, were taken to Sri Lanka’s eastern port of Trincomalee, a navy spokesman said on Friday.
“Medical checks have to be done before they are allowed to disembark,” the spokesman said.
The Muslim-majority ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar and thousands risk their lives each year on long sea journeys, the majority heading southeast to Malaysia or Indonesia.
But fisherman spotted the drifting trawler off Sri Lanka’s northern coast at Mullivaikkal at dawn on Thursday.
The navy spokesman said on Friday that language difficulties had made it hard to understand where the refugees had been headed, suggesting that “recent cyclonic weather” may have pushed them off course.
While unusual, it is not the first boat to head to Sri Lanka, which is about 1,750km (1,100 miles) across open seas southwest of Myanmar.
In October, six people died as nearly 100 Rohingya landed by boat in Indonesia’s Aceh province in one of the latest waves of arrivals from Myanmar.
The Sri Lankan navy rescued more than 100 Rohingya refugees in distress on a boat off their shores in December 2022.
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar for neighbouring Bangladesh during a crackdown by the military that is now the subject of a United Nations genocide court case.
Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup and a grinding civil war since then has forced millions to flee.
The Rohingya have borne the brunt of the latest fighting because they have been forcibly drafted into the army despite not being recognised as citizens.
