|
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency said Friday it fears that
427 Rohingya fleeing Myanmar and a refugee camp in Bangladesh
may have died at sea this month.
UNHCR said it has collected reports from family members and
others of two separate boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar
in May. It acknowledged that details remained unclear but that
enough information has been collected and verified to bring the
incidents to light publicly.
About 1 million Rohingya, who are predominantly Muslim, are in
camps in Bangladesh after leaving Myanmar. They include about
740,000 who fled a brutal “clearance campaign” in 2017 by
Myanmar’s security forces, who were accused of committing mass
rapes and killings.
A first boat that left from a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar,
Bangladesh, and traveled to Rakhine State in neighboring Myanmar
to pick up more people sank on May 9, with only 66 survivors
among a total of 267 people on board, UNHCR said.
The Geneva-based agency said reports indicated a second boat
with 247 people on board that made a similar journey capsized a
day later, with only 21 survivors.
“Reports have been coming in and it has been very hard to
confirm what has happened, but the fear is that this number of
people may have lost their lives at sea in the region,” said
UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch.
“Before these two tragedies, some 30 Rohingya were reported to
have died or gone missing in boat journeys in 2025,” he said.
“So if confirmed, this is a huge jump.”
Thousands of Rohingya each year attempt to cross the Bay of
Bengal and the Andaman Sea, and often the fates of those who
have gone missing go unexplained. Even when officials knew the
boats’ locations, maritime authorities to rescue some of them
have gone ignored, UNHCR has said.
A total of 657 people died or went missing in the regional
waters in more than 150 boat journeys by fleeing Rohingya last
year, UNHCR said.
The recent monsoon season brought perilous maritime conditions
including strong winds, rain and rough seas, UNHCR said, adding
that it was investigating reports about the fate of a third boat
carrying 188 Rohingya that left Myanmar on May 14.
Many Rohingya have fled by sea to Indonesia, which has reported
an increase in the number of Rohingya refugees in recent months.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights
reserved |
|
