More than 500 people fleeing violence in Myanmar are feared dead after two boats disappeared in rough conditions off the country’s coast, according to two UN migration bodies.
The vessels reportedly departed from Myanmar’s western Rakhine State in late June and were carrying mostly Rohingya passengers, according to a joint statement from the International Organization for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency Thursday.
One boat reportedly carrying 250 people lost contact shortly after departure while another, with about 280 passengers, is believed to have sunk off Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady coast on July 8, according to the statement.
The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim ethnic minority group from Myanmar’s Rakhine state, who have faced decades of state-sponsored persecution, violence and what the US has classified as genocide.
While more than 1 million Rohingya have fled across the border to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where they are mostly confined to overcrowded and squalid camps, roughly 630,000 still live in Rakhine, according to Human Rights Watch.
Myanmar has been in the throes of bloody civil war for more than five years, since the military junta ousted the elected government in 2021. At least 100,000 have been killed in the fighting, according to conflict monitoring group ACLED.
A grave humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Rakhine, exacerbated by the escalating conflict between the junta and the Arakan Army rebel group, which controls much of the state.
