Around 250 people are missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshis capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations refugee and migration agency said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The United Nations agency said the trawler carrying around 250 men, women and children sank due to strong winds, rough seas and overcrowding. The plane departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and headed for Malaysia.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said: “This tragedy highlights the devastating human cost of prolonged displacement and the continued lack of sustainable solutions for the Rohingya.”
For years, many of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minorities have tried to cross into neighboring countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand on rickety wooden boats to escape persecution in Myanmar and overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.
These organizations called on the international community to step up and continue funding for life-saving assistance for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and support for host communities in Bangladesh.
In 2017, Myanmar’s military launched an offensive that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes into neighboring Bangladesh, where they detailed killings, gang rapes and arson. A UN fact-finding mission concluded that the 2017 military attack involved an “act of genocide”.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar denies genocide and says the U.N. fact-finding mission was neither objective nor reliable.
