At least there are 14 people dead and more than 50 missing after sinking a ship It has been burdened with the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in Burma in the Bay of Bengal, local media reported on Tuesday. The bodies of the victims, many of whom were minor, were found on beaches in the town of Shwe Thaung Yan in the Irrawaddy district, about 120 kilometers west of Yangon, between Sunday and Monday.
According to testimonies of survivors and witnesses collected by Radio Free Asia radio station, the boat carrying around 90 people left Rakhine, Burma, for Malaysia. caused by a strong storm shipwreck.
A resident stated 23 Rohingya found aliveis collecting the media in question, while local authorities ensure that they have arrested five alleged traffickers. According to survivors, the Rohingya paid $1,500 to $2,500 (between 1,400 and 2,340 euros) for the crossing, and the majority came from displacement camps near Sittwe, the Rakhine capital, where more than 120,000 people of this ethnic group live. Prisoners since 2012.
The situation for the Rohingya worsened in 2017, when a military operation in Rakhine caused thousands of deaths and the migration of 725,000 members of this Muslim minority to neighboring Bangladesh. UN investigators describe this campaign as “ethnic cleansing with traces of genocide”, while Burmese generals face genocide charges before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The vast majority of Rohingya are stateless people who were stripped of their citizenship by the government in the early 1990s and who have lived in the country for generations but have been discriminated against for decades as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Because they lack citizenship and documents, the Rohingya cannot move freely within their own country without the permission of the authorities, among many other discriminations. Thousands of Rohingya, many of them originating from refugee camps in Bangladesh, risk their lives each year to illegally come to Malaysia or Indonesia in search of a more prosperous future.
Source: Informacion
