More Rohingya fleeing Myanmar after monsoon season ends, as boats set sail for Thailand and Malaysia
- Displacement camps in Rakhine are home to tens of thousands of Rohingya, who live in dire living conditions with limited access to food and no freedom of movement
- The renewed exodus from Rakhine throws the possibility of repatriating the 700,000 refugees living in Bangladesh further into turmoil
A new exodus of boats carrying Rohingya fleeing from Myanmar has begun, with at least six boats carrying hundreds of refugees intercepted at sea or washing ashore over the past month.
The recent flurry of voyages making the treacherous crossing of the Andaman Sea to seek refuge in Thailand and Malaysia is close to reaching levels last seen in 2015, which prompted the Thai authorities to crack down on human smuggling networks.
Voyages tend to stop completely during monsoon season, which begins in June and creates dangerous conditions, but the end of the rains in October often leads to a fresh wave of boats taking to the calmer seas.
On Tuesday morning, 20 men believed to be Rohingya arrived on the shores of the Indonesian island of Aceh in a small rickety boat, seeking refuge.
The arrival comes after the Myanmar navy picked up 38 Rohingya, 19 men, 11 women, and eight children last week in the Andaman Sea, who were heading for Malaysia. After their boat was apprehended, they were detained by the Myanmar police and sent back to Rakhine state, where tens of thousands of Rohingya are forced to live in displacement camps.
It is not known yet whether the men who arrived in Aceh this week had fled Rakhine or Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where almost one million Rohingya refugees are living after fleeing a brutal campaign of violence by the military and Buddhist locals, which the UN has described as ethnic cleansing.
