At least one hundred eighty ethnic Rohingya stranded at sea for weeks after leaving Bangladesh in November are feared dead, as their rickety boat is notion to have sunk this month, the United Nations refugee enterprise (UNHCR) stated.
Citing unconfirmed reports, the enterprise stated the “unseaworthy” boat in all likelihood sank after it went lacking withinside the sea.
“Relatives have misplaced contact,” the UNHCR wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “Those closing in contact presume all are dead.”
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are residing in crowded camps in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, such as tens of heaps who fled Myanmar after its army carried out a lethal crackdown in 2017.
In Buddhist-majority Myanmar maximum Rohingya Muslims are denied citizenship and are are visible as interlopers, unlawful immigrants from South Asia.
In Bangladesh, however, they have got rarely any get entry to to work.
Traffickers regularly trap them to make perilous trips with guarantees of labor in Southeast Asian international locations like Malaysia.
Braving thirst, starvation and disease, refugees regularly come to be drifting in global waters after leaving southern Bangladesh withinside the wish of locating food, jobs and refuge some other place in Asia.
Last week, Myanmar Rohingya activist agencies stated up to twenty humans died of starvation or thirst on a ship that turned into stranded at sea for 2 weeks off India’s coast. The boat with as a minimum one hundred humans turned into stated to be in Malaysian waters.
Earlier this month, the Sri Lankan military rescued 104 Rohingya adrift off the Indian Ocean island’s northern coast.
The UNHCR has entreated international locations withinside the area to assist mitigate the humanitarian crisis, whilst the refugees themselves have made appeals to the arena now no longer to neglect about their plight.