Dhaka: At least 17 Rohingya refugees have been killed, and 30 remain missing after a boat capsized in bad weather in the Bay of Bengal, aid workers in Myanmar said. Volunteers said that eight people were rescued from the boat, which was headed for Malaysia, a coveted destination for thousands of Muslim-majority Rohingya people fleeing persecution and poverty in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
It was unclear from where the boat had set off. “We found dead bodies from August 7,” said Min Htal Wah, chairperson of Shwe Yaung Metta Foundation, a rescue organisation based in the coastal Rakhine state of Myanmar. “Within three days, we found 17 bodies … We found some people alive,” he said, adding that 10 women were among the dead.
A Rohingya aid worker in Maungdaw township on the border with Bangladesh said the boat had departed in bad weather, and about 500 others were still hoping to cross to Malaysia. Nearly one million Rohingya people live in crowded conditions in Bangladesh, among them those who fled a deadly crackdown in 2017 by Myanmar’s military, which has denied committing crimes against humanity.
An untold number of them have died at sea from disease, hunger and fatigue as they attempt to reach Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia in rickety boats.