MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2022) More than 100 Rohingya refugees are stranded on a boat off India's Andaman Islands, and up to 20 people have reportedly died of thirst or hunger there, Bangladeshi e-newspaper bdnews24 reported on Wednesday, citing activist groups.
A group of Rohingya refugees have been adrift on an unseaworthy vessel in the Andaman Sea since the beginning of December. The United Nations Refugee Agency and the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights have repeatedly called on the regional authorities to launch a rescue operation for the refugees.
"We estimate that probably as many as 20 have died ... some from hunger and thirst, and others jumped overboard in desperation. This is absolutely awful and outrageous," Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project that supports Myanmar's Rohingyas, said, as quoted by the e-newspaper.
The boat was reportedly approached by Indian vessels on Tuesday night, according to the chair of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network's Rohingya Working Group, Lilianne Fan.
"We hope that the Indian Navy or Coastguard will manage to rescue and disembark the boat as soon as possible. These people have been adrift on a damaged boat for more than 2 weeks without food and water. We have heard that up to 16 people may have already died," Fan said.
The Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic group that predominantly resides in Myanmar's Rakhine State, have been targeted by the country's military for years. Some 1.1 million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military began an operation on August 25, 2017 to defeat the insurgency in Rakhine.
