The U.N. refugee company on Friday estimated not less than 427 Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh died at sea in May.
UNHCR mentioned it has collected studies from relations and others of two separate boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar in May. It acknowledged that particulars remained unclear however that sufficient data has been collected and verified to carry the incidents to gentle publicly.
About 1 million Rohingya, who’re predominantly Muslim, are in camps in Bangladesh after leaving Myanmar. They embody about 740,000 who fled a brutal “clearance campaign” in 2017 by Myanmar’s safety forces, who have been accused of committing mass rapes and killings.
A primary boat that left from a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and traveled to Rakhine State in neighboring Myanmar to select up extra individuals sank on May 9, with solely 66 survivors amongst a complete of 267 individuals on board, UNHCR mentioned.
The Geneva-based company mentioned studies indicated a second boat with 247 individuals on board that made the same journey capsized a day later, with solely 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,” mentioned 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 mentioned. “So if confirmed, this is a huge jump.”
Thousands of Rohingya annually try to cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, and sometimes the fates of those that have gone lacking go unexplained. Even when officers knew the boats’ places, maritime authorities to rescue a few of them have gone ignored, UNHCR has mentioned.
A complete of 657 individuals died or went lacking within the regional waters in additional than 150 boat journeys by fleeing Rohingya final yr, UNHCR mentioned.
The current monsoon season introduced perilous maritime circumstances together with robust winds, rain and tough seas, UNHCR mentioned, including that it was investigating studies concerning the destiny of a 3rd boat carrying 188 Rohingya that left Myanmar on May 14.
Many Rohingya have fled by sea to Indonesia, which has reported a rise within the variety of Rohingya refugees in current months.
Source: www.dailysabah.com