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Rabat – More than 60 people are believed to have died after a boat carrying Rohingya Muslims escaping violence in Myanmar capsized off of Bangladesh.
The vessel overturned while trying to cross rough seas between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Twenty-three people were confirmed dead, while more than 40 were “missing and presumed drowned,” according to a UN spokesman.
Many Rohingya Muslims have died while they were trying to cross into Bangladesh during the Myanmar military’s crackdown in the Burmese state of Rakhine, which many in the international community have identified as ethnic cleansing.
Violence against the Rohingya Muslims broke out on August 25 when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) unleashed a wave of repression against nearly 300,000 members of the Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, out of the total population of approximately 1 million.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since August in order to escape violence in Myanamar. The number of Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh has risen 436,000 to 480,000 due to an estimated 35,000 refugees who had not been accounted for moving into two refugee camps in the country, according to a report issued by the United Nations on September 26.
UN secretary General Antonio Guterresha surged Myanamar’s officials to end the military violence against the Rohingya Muslims. Gueteress described the Rohingya crisis “the world’s fastest developing refugee emergency and a humanitarian and human rights nightmare.”
In late September, Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the UN, urged the countries that provide Myanamar’s government with weapons to stop doing so until “sufficient accountability measures” were in place.
“Those who have been accused of committing abuses should be removed from command responsibilities immediately and prosecuted for wrongdoing,” said Haley.
