The UN says hundreds of refugees are adrift in the Andaman Sea
The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday that around 400 people are believed to be stranded on two boats adrift in the Andaman Sea, and called on nearby governments to help rescue them.
Most of them are believed to be members of the Rohingya ethnic group, a persecuted Muslim minority, the UN agency said. More than a million Rohingya have fled state persecution and massacre in Myanmar in recent years and are now living in appalling conditions in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Thousands of others have made risky journeys across the Andaman Sea in rickety boats, often bound for countries in Southeast Asia.
Babar Baloch, a spokesman in Bangkok for the agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the precise locations of the two boats were unknown and it was not clear which country they had left from, but that they were sea seemed to have been. for at least two weeks.
He said the agency was aware of the boats based on conversations with relatives of those on board and human rights workers who spoke to them by phone, but that it had no details about the passengers’ circumstances.
“Our fear is that food and water, if not already available, will soon run out,” Mr Baloch said. “Our fear is that people could lose their lives, and we are talking about hundreds of people.”
The Associated Press quoted the captain of one of the boats as saying this over the weekend there were 180 to 190 people on board and that they had run out of food and water. He said the boat was about 200 miles off the west coast of Thailand; The AP said it was about the same distance from Aceh, an Indonesian province that is a common destination for boats carrying Rohingya refugees.
Miftach Cut Adek, the head of an official fishing association in Aceh, said by phone that local authorities were aware of the two missing boats but that he was not aware of any rescue plans. Other officials in Aceh could not be reached for comment.
A spokesman for the Royal Thai Navy told AP on Monday that he had no information about the boats.
Mr Baloch said hundreds of refugees had died at sea in similar circumstances last year, blaming the “inaction” of several countries in the region. That number includes 180 Rohingya who were stranded in the Andaman for weeks in late 2022 and never found.
Nearly 6,000 refugees — including many Rohingya — have made risky sea journeys from Bangladesh or Myanmar since November 2022, with nearly 500 later reported dead or missing, Mr. Baloch said. He said the boats had largely disembarked in Indonesia, and that at least seven boats had come ashore in recent weeks. (The busiest time for such trips is typically the last three months of the year.)
Mr Baloch said while many of those who crossed the Andaman Sea were officially registered as refugees in Bangladesh, others had left directly from Myanmar. “Let us not forget that Myanmar has an escalating conflict,” he said.
Large parts of Myanmar are at war, with civilians taking up arms to resist the military junta that ousted the civilian government in 2021, while an alliance of armed ethnic groups expands its territory. It is estimated that around two and a half million people have been displaced in Myanmar, more than half a million of them since late October when fighting escalated. according to UN figures.
Hasya Nindita reporting contributed.