A boat carrying around 180 Rohingya refugees went missing after leaving the coast of Bangladesh weeks ago: according to the UNHCR, the United Nations agency that deals with refugees, it may have sunk and those on board could be death. The boat had left in late November and was crossing the Andaman Sea, probably to reach Malaysia. If the deaths of the refugees were confirmed, the number of Rohingya people who died in 2022 crossing the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal would rise to around 400, one of the highest figures in recent years.
The Rohingya are a large ethnic group of the Muslim religion originating mainly from Myanmar, where they have been suffering intense persecution and violence for years. In Bangladesh, the country from which the probably sunken boat had left, there are several refugee camps where about a million people live. They are improvised, overcrowded, with poor sanitary conditions, often affected by fires or floods and in which a series of criminal gangs who traffic drugs, kidnap people and carry out rape and violence.
