GAMBLE:
While Rohingya typically avoid boat journeys in monsoon season, unrest has led an increasing number of them to attempt to cross the ocean on rickety boats
More than 500 people are feared dead after reports that two boats carrying members of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority capsized in the Bay of Bengal, officials said yesterday. According to preliminary information, the two boats left Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine late last month carrying mostly Rohingya passengers, including some who had traveled from refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. One boat, believed to have been carrying about 250 people, lost contact shortly after departure. A second boat, reportedly carrying 280 people, is believed to have sunk off Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady coast on Wednesday last week.
A Rohingya refugee camp is pictured in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Nov. 25 last year.
“While the incidents and casualty figures have yet to be officially confirmed, UNHCR and IOM are gravely concerned by the potentially devastating loss of life,” the agencies said. Burmese Ministry of Home Affairs spokesman Acting Police Brigadier General Soe Lin Aung declined to comment.
