|
The UNHCR said in a joint statement with the International
Organization for Migration that if the death toll was confirmed,
it would be the biggest loss of life so far this year.
The alert was raised on Wednesday when fishermen rescued six of
the migrants. A fishing community in Aceh said they had been
standing on the hull of the boat after it capsized due to high
tides.
For years, Rohingya have left Buddhist-majority Myanmar where
they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South
Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.
More than 2,300 Rohingya arrived in Indonesia last year, UNHCR
data showed, surpassing the number of arrivals in the previous
four years combined.
The 2023 toll of at least 569 Rohingya dead or missing while
trying to flee Myanmar or Bangladesh was the highest since 2014,
the UNHCR said in January.
Babar Baloch, a UNHCR Asia spokesperson, told Reuters on Friday
there had been 151 people on this latest boat, some 75 of whom
have been evacuated by local authorities, while the rest were
"presumed dead or missing".
Faisal Rahman, UNHCR's protection associate in Aceh, told
Reuters the surviving Rohingya were in a good condition and were
staying at a Red Cross building in West Aceh.
The immigration agency in Aceh did not respond to a request for
comment.
(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Alison Williams)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
