Dozens of Rohingya refugees are dead or missing after a boat carrying about 90 people, including children, capsized in bad weather off the coast of Myanmar over the weekend.
According to Radio Free Asia, quoting residents in the coastal district of Shwe Tong Yan, the authorities detained more than 20 survivors in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady district.
The Ayeyarwaddy Times newspaper quoted survivors as saying that the boat, which was bound for Malaysia, encountered problems two days after it left Myanmar’s Rakhine state on May 19.
Radio Free Asia said that at least 14 bodies have been recovered so far, but more than 50 people are still missing.
Only about 600,000 Rohingya Muslims remain in Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country with a long history of military rule. Myanmar considers the Rohingya stateless.
As a result of ethnic violence and persecution in the past, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 148,000 of that number are displaced, many of whom live in camps.
A spokesman for the military government did not respond to a request for comment on the latest tragedy related to the deaths of the Rohingya at sea in an attempt to escape persecution in Myanmar.
More than 730,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape a military crackdown that UN investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rape.
Myanmar has denied committing large-scale atrocities and views the violence as a response to attacks by Rohingya militants.
The other main destination for Rohingya refugees is Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that is seen as sympathetic even though they are not officially recognized there as refugees.
