The boat capsized during a storm and 23 survivors were arrested by police in Pathein district in Myanmar’s Ayeryarwady region.

The refugees, who were fleeing persecution by the Burmese junta, paid traffickers 1,500 – 2,500 USD each to get to Malaysia via boat, where they hoped to find employment, local media outlets quoted some survivors as saying.

The Rohingya people are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar.

Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar.

Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law.

There are also restrictions on their freedom of movement, access to state education and civil service jobs.

The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, a South African anti-apartheid activist.

The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court investigating crimes against humanity, and led to the International Court of Justice investigating genocide. (ILKHA)