BY NBC NEWS
BANGKOK, Thailand The UNHCR’s regional spokeswoman in Bangkok, Babar Baloch, expressed concern that everyone on board would perish if rescue measures are not made.
“If action is not taken to save these desperate souls, approximately 400 children, women, and men will be staring death in the eye,” he said to The Associated Press. According to him, the boats reportedly sailed for almost two weeks after leaving Bangladesh.
When the AP got in touch with the captain of one of the boats on Saturday, he said that there were between 180 and 190 people on board, that they were running low on food and water, and that the engine was broken. The skipper, identified as Maan Nokim, expressed his concern that everyone on board would perish if assistance is not given.
According to Nokim, the yacht was 200 miles off the west coast of Thailand on Sunday. When reached on Monday, a Thai navy spokesman claimed to be unaware of any information on the vessels.
About the same distance separates the site from Aceh, the northernmost state of Indonesia, where another boat carrying 139 passengers arrived on Sabang Island, off the tip of Sumatra, on Saturday, according to Baloch. According to him, the composition of these people is normal for those traveling by sea: 58 children, 45 women, and 36 males. Aceh received hundreds more last month.
Rohingya leave Bangladesh in seasonal migration,
generally from filthy, congested refugee camps. Due to food ration cutbacks and an increase in gang violence, which leaves camp inhabitants terrified for their safety, the number of Rohingya leaving the camps has increased since last year.
After a vicious counterinsurgency operation tore through their towns, some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims, who are Muslims by religion, fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to camps in Bangladesh since August 2017. Thousands of Rohingya houses have allegedly been set on fire, and security forces in Myanmar have been accused of brutal rapes and massacres.
International tribunals are debating whether or not what they did constituted genocide.
Seeking employment, the majority of migrants departing from the camps by water want to go to Malaysia, which is mostly Muslim. Some boats reach Thailand, but Thailand sends them away or holds them. They are detained by Indonesia, another nation with a large Muslim population, where many end up.
In December 2022, a boat carrying 180 people went missing in one of the deadliest tragedies in the area. Baloch warned that if help is not provided to the two drifting vessels, the world “may witness another tragedy.”
