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A ship carrying 180 Rohingya is lacking at sea and presumed sunk, a UN company says.
The attainable sinking of a ship with 180 Muslim-majority Rohingya on board will make 2022 one of many worst years for the neighborhood as refugees attempt to flee determined situations in camps in Bangladesh, based on the United Nations refugee company.
Almost a million Rohingya from Myanmar live in crowded facilities in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, together with tens of 1000’s who fled their house nation after its army carried out a lethal crackdown in 2017.
In Buddhist-majority Myanmar, most Rohingya are denied citizenship and are seen as unlawful immigrants from South Asia.
The UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stated over the weekend it feared {that a} boat, which began its journey from Bangladesh on the finish of November was missing at sea, with all 180 on board presumed useless.
The UNHCR stated the vessel, which was not seaworthy, could have began to crack in early December earlier than shedding contact. “We hope towards hope that the 180 lacking are nonetheless alive someplace on the market,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch advised Reuters information company.
The UNHCR estimates practically 900 Rohingya died or went lacking within the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal in 2013 and greater than 700 in 2014. A number of hundred are feared useless or lacking at sea this 12 months already, earlier than the newest incident. “One of many worst years for useless and lacking after 2013 and 2014,” Baloch stated of 2022, including the variety of folks attempting to flee had returned to ranges seen earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Tendencies present the numbers reaching again to 2020, when over 2,400 folks tried the dangerous sea crossings, with greater than 200 folks useless or lacking.”
The variety of Rohingya leaving Bangladesh in boats this 12 months has jumped greater than fivefold this 12 months from a 12 months earlier, rights teams estimate.
Baloch stated it was not clear the place precisely the boat with 180 on board went lacking, nor whether or not the lifting of COVID restrictions in Southeast Asia, a favoured vacation spot for the Rohingya, was resulting in the frenzy of individuals.
Sayedur Rahman, 38, who fled to Malaysia in 2012 from Myanmar, stated his spouse, two sons aged 17 and 13, and a daughter aged 12 have been among the many lacking.
“In 2017, my household got here to Bangladesh to save lots of their lives,” Rahman stated, referring to that 12 months’s exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar.
“However they’re now all gone … Now I’m devastated,” Rahman stated. “We Rohingya are left to die … on the land, at sea. In every single place.”
Earlier this month, two Myanmar Rohingya activist teams stated as much as 20 folks died of starvation or thirst on what the UNHCR stated was a separate boat that was stranded at sea for 2 weeks off India’s coast. The boat, with at the very least 100 folks on board, was stated to be in Malaysian waters.
Amid the dreaded deaths, some boats have made land or been rescued at sea.
On Monday the Worldwide Group for Migration stated in an announcement that 57 Rohingya males disembarked in Indonesia’s Aceh Besar district early on December 25 with the assist of local people members.
It stated the male-only boat is believed to have set off from Bangladesh and spent practically a month drifting at sea.
Indonesian officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Two boats carrying a complete of 230 Rohingya refugees, together with ladies and kids, landed on the shores of Indonesia’s Aceh province in November, whereas this month, Sri Lanka’s navy rescued 104 Rohingya adrift off the Indian Ocean island’s northern coast.
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