More people are risking their lives to cross the Indian Ocean on smuggler’s boats despite the great risks involved, including the prospect of “horrific violence,” the United Nations refugee agency warned on Friday. Speaking at a press briefing in Geneva, William Spindler, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters that an estimated 54,000 people had undertaken irregular maritime journeys in the Southeast Asian region of the Indian Ocean, including some 53,000 people leaving from the Bay of Bengal towards Thailand and Malaysia. According to UNHCR, in fact, an estimated total of 120,000 people are believed to have embarked on these clandestine journeys across the Bay of Bengal since the beginning of 2012, with payments ranging from $1,600 to $2,400 per passenger. As a result of the frequency and cost of the journey, smugglers have managed to generate nearly $250 million in revenue in the last three years alone. “The outflow from the Bay of Bengal tended to peak in October, when calmer waters followed the end of the rainy season,” Spindler explained..”
The UNHCR spokesperson noted that “departures this October surged more than in previous years,” adding that some 21,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis had set sail since then – a 37 per cent increase over the same period last year. About 10 per cent were believed to be women while approximately a third of arrivals interviewed by UNHCR in Thailand and Malaysia were minors under the age of 18. Spindler explain the surge was due to current conditions in Myanmar where ethnic tensions and conflict could be driving Rohingya, an ethnic minority group, to leave the country. (Source: UN)
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