53,000 left Bangladesh and Myanmar on smuggling boats bound for Thailand, Malaysia
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 07 December, 2014, 5:24am
UPDATED : Sunday, 07 December, 2014, 5:24am
Agence France-Presse in Geneva
About 53,000 people left Bangladesh and Myanmar on treacherous smuggling boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia this year, the UNHCR said in a report. Photo: Reuters
About 53,000 people left Bangladesh and Myanmar on treacherous smuggling boats bound for Thailand and Malaysia this year, about 540 of them dying on the journey, the UN refugee agency has said.
The majority are stateless Rohingya Muslims, fleeing ethnic tensions in Myanmar or poor prospects in Bangladesh, as well as Bangladeshis looking for a better life, the UNHCR said in a report.
Some 50,000 of these left from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border area, 15 per cent more then left between January and November last year, and more than triple the estimated number of departures during the same period in 2012.
Almost half - 21,000 - of these passengers left the border area in the last two months, a 37 per cent increase compared to October and November last year, the UNHCR said.
The remaining 3,000 came from the Sittwe area of Myanmar.
"Several individuals reported incidents of rape and some said they had been trafficked, though the coercive conditions of travel often blurred the distinction between smuggling and trafficking," the report said.
Rohingya Muslims, viewed by the UN as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, have long fled discrimination and repression in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. But the flow has accelerated into a growing exodus two years after deadly clashes erupted between Buddhists and Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state, activists say.
The conditions on board the boats are often dire, with water, food and space in short supply.
