Two boats carrying an estimated 530 Rohingya asylum seekers departed Rakhine State, Myanmar, on June 29 and have not been heard from since, with researchers and advocacy groups now widely convinced that both vessels sank with little or no chance of survival. Half of those on board are believed to have been women and children.
Boats Lost Contact After Departure
According to the BBC, Chris Lewa, who leads the Arakan Project, an advocacy organisation focused on Rohingya rights, said she pieced together the account through indirect contacts after communications infrastructure in the region was severed. She confirmed that one boat left Sin Tet Maw, an Arakan Army-controlled coastal village, during the morning of June 29, and a second departed later that day. Both were headed south along the Myanmar coast, with Malaysia as the intended final destination via overland routes through Thailand.
Families of those on board typically expect word within seven to ten days. Nearly three weeks passed with complete silence.
Evidence Points to Capsizing
Physical evidence has since surfaced. Bangladeshi authorities recovered the body of a woman washed ashore from the sea. Separately, fishermen operating between the Irrawaddy delta and the Mon State coastline retrieved multiple bodies roughly nine days after the boats set out. Lewa assessed that one vessel likely went down within hours of departure, while the other probably capsized after several days at sea, consistent with the different locations where remains were found.
The timing matters. The monsoon season was fully under way when the boats left, bringing rough seas and dangerous swells. The vessels themselves were typical of those used in this trade: ageing fishing trawlers retrofitted to carry the maximum number of passengers, with unreliable engines and minimal safety provisions.
Why Rohingyas Keep Boarding Dangerous Boats
Rakhine State has been engulfed in armed conflict for years, with the Arakan Army expelling Myanmar's military from most of the territory and continuing to besiege the state capital Sittwe. Rohingyas in the region face forced conscription by the military junta and are accused by rights groups of suffering serious abuses at the hands of the Arakan Army as well. An estimated 600,000 Rohingyas remain in Rakhine, a quarter of them confined to internally displaced persons camps.
Across the border, more than a million Rohingyas live in severely overcrowded camps in southern Bangladesh, where international aid has been declining, formal employment is essentially unavailable, and organised criminal networks operate openly. Residents are not permitted to move freely.
For many, paying people smugglers approximately $3,000 per person to attempt the sea crossing to Malaysia, where around 200,000 Rohingyas already reside, represents the only plausible exit. Lewa estimates that at least 10,000 Rohingyas have boarded boats out of Myanmar and Bangladesh since September 2024, a notably higher figure than in prior years.
The United Nations has called on regional governments to establish safer passage options for Rohingyas, but no country in South or South-East Asia has indicated willingness to receive them or facilitate their movement.
Online Hate Swell Indonesia Anti-Rohingya Sentiment
Legit.ng earlier reported that arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back. The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.
