Departure from Myanmar 1750km Away
A boat carrying about 100 refugees was adrift in Sri Lankan waters before being rescued by the local navy.
According to AFP and other sources on the 20th (local time), the refugees were discovered by fishermen in the northern waters of Sri Lanka early the previous day and were guided by naval vessels to move to the Sri Lankan eastern naval base.
According to a Sri Lankan navy official, the rescued refugees are Rohingya, totaling 102 people including 25 children and 30 women. It is known that they departed from Myanmar, which is 1,750 km away.
The navy official said that the boat appeared to have deviated from its course due to the recent tropical storm cyclone. The Sri Lankan navy also rescued 100 Rohingya refugees adrift on a boat in its waters in December 2022. They were also reported to have departed from Myanmar.
The Rohingya, who practice Islam, have been persecuted in Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country, and fled en masse to Bangladesh following a large-scale crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017. Since then, the flow of refugees has continued intermittently, and currently about one million people reside in the Cox's Bazar refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh.
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