The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said that over 400 Muslim Rohingya refugees are feared drowned in two shipwrecks off Myanmar’s coast.
UNHCR said on Friday that the two boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar on May 9 and 10, if confirmed, could be the “deadliest tragedy at sea” involving Rohingya so far this year.
“The UN refugee agency is gravely concerned about reports of two boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar earlier this month,” UNHCR said in the statement, adding that it was still working to find out the exact circumstances surrounding the shipwrecks.
Preliminary investigation revealed that a vessel carrying 267 people sank on May 9, with only 66 people surviving, and a second ship with 247 Rohingya on board capsized on May 10, with just 21 survivors.
The refugees on board the two ships were either leaving the refugee camps in Bangladesh or fleeing Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, the UNHCR said in its statement.
Muslim Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar to neighboring countries use boats to cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
So far in 2025, nearly 1 out of 5 people attempting the perilous journey have been reported as dead or missing, making the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea waters amongst the deadliest in the world.
According to UNHCR reports, some 657 Rohingya died in the region’s waters in 2024.
The United Nations recognizes the Rohingya Muslims as the most persecuted ethnic minority in the world.
Meanwhile, for decades, the group has been persecuted by the military and Buddhist authorities in Myanmar, forcing thousands of Rohingya to risk their lives every year to flee repression and civil war in their country, often going to sea on board makeshift boats.
UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi wrote in a posting on X, formerly Twitter, that the news of the double shipwreck tragedy was “a reminder of the desperate situation of the Rohingya “and of the hardship faced by refugees in Bangladesh as humanitarian aid dwindles”.
Following the brutal crackdown on the Rohingya in Rakhine by Myanmar’s military in 2017, more than a million Muslims fled to neighboring Bangladesh and are living there in dire conditions at the huge Cox’s Bazar refugee camps.
However, due to cuts in funding by major donors, led by the administration of US President Donald Trump and other Western countries, international humanitarian organizations have been struggling to be able to extend aid to the refugees.
