UN fears over 500 Myanmar refugees drowned as boats sink

Preliminary reports indicated that two boats carrying more than 500 refugees recently sank off the coast of Myanmar, the United Nations migration and refugee agencies said Thursday. The passengers were mostly members of Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic minority who had fled the country’s Rakhine State in late June. Some of them had traveled from refugee camps in Bangladesh.

All the passengers were feared dead, the UN agencies said Thursday. The boats departed outside the normal sailing season, when sea conditions are more hazardous. If the losses are verified, they would raise the number of people lost in the Andaman Sea or Bay of Bengal this year to roughly 800 souls. The two connected bodies of water are distinct parts of the northeastern Indian Ocean of the coast of Myanmar.

Who are the Rohingya people? The mostly-Muslim ethnic group is persecuted by Buddhist majority groups in Myanmar, according to the United Nations. The Rohingya have been denied citizenship in the country since 1982, and over a million are living as refugees in Bangladesh. Myanmar has also persecuted mostly-Christian Chin, Kachin, and Karen communities, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Dig deeper: Read Christina Grube’s story on a recent report about religious persecution, including that of the Rohingya people.