‘They Are Invisible People’: Hundreds of Rohingya Vanish at Sea

 By Verena Hölzl

July 17, 2026Updated 10:20 a.m. ET

When Nur Kalima’s two young children ask where their father is, she tells them he will be back soon. In reality, she is convinced he has been dead for weeks.

She said that she thinks her husband, Abdul Rahman, was on one of the two boats that the United Nations says sank off the coast of Myanmar early this month. The vessels were headed to Malaysia, where its passengers, mostly members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority of Myanmar, had hoped to build a better life. On Thursday, the U.N. said that it fears more than 500 people died.

“Who will take care of me now?” said Ms. Nur Kalima, 24, who is pregnant with her third child.

Her family is among more than one million Rohingya living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, since they were driven out of Myanmar by their countrymen almost a decade ago. They have little to no access to education or employment, and international aid has been shrinking for years.

About six weeks ago, Mr. Abdul Rahman left his family’s bamboo shelter in the camps, presumably to look for a job overseas. A week later, a man, who did not identify himself, called Ms. Nur Kalima on the phone and told her that her husband was on his way to Malaysia. He demanded about $3,000 to keep him safe, in a sign that human traffickers were involved in Mr. Abdul Rahman’s journey.

Then the calls stopped. Instead, news trickled in about bodies that had washed ashore on the coast of Myanmar. Ms. Nur Kalima’s heart sank

The U.N. believes that two vessels departed from Rakhine State, an impoverished region in western Myanmar and the traditional homeland of the Rohingya, in late June. Some passengers were Rohingya who came back to Myanmar from the camps in Bangladesh. One boat lost contact with land soon after beginning its voyage, according to the U.N. The other reportedly capsized roughly a week into the journey.

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A refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this year. Aid has been shrinking for years.Credit...Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters

There have been no reports of anyone coming to the rescue.

Lynn Htet, a Myanmar researcher with Fortify Rights, a Thailand-based rights group, said he was disheartened that hundreds of people could disappear without the world springing into action to help them, or even noticing before weeks had passed.

“If the people on the boats were from the West, many countries would have come together to form search groups. But Rohingya don’t have any influence. They are invisible people.”

Over the past decade, roughly 5,000 Rohingya have drowned at sea, according to the U.N., with 2025 being the deadliest year on record.

“This tragedy underscores, once again, the deadly consequences of the continued persecution, violence, and denial of basic rights faced by Rohingya people,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.

Rohingya are stateless in their own country and have been persecuted for decades. In 2017, Myanmar’s military launched an ethnic cleansing operation against them that the U.N. and the United States say was a genocideIn April, 250 migrants from Bangladesh, including many Rohingya refugees, are believed to have died when their boat overturned in the Andaman Sea.

Mohammed Rafique, a 26-year-old Rohingya passenger, was among the few survivors. Conditions on the boat were so inhumane, he said, that some voyagers had suffocated to death in the overcrowded fish hold before it capsize“I went through the worst and would never encourage anyone to take this journey,” he said.

The U.N. is calling for attention on the rising number of boat journeys Rohingya are taking through the Bay of Bengal, which borders both Bangladesh and Myanmar, as they try to flee hardship and persecution, or are tricked onto boats by traffickers. “Stronger regional and international efforts are needed to prevent further loss of life along one of the world’s deadliest maritime routes,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency, said in a joint statement.

Hamid Ullah, 19, was among the residents of the camp in Bangladesh who went to Myanmar and is believed to have been on one of the boats. He remains missing. Even before his family lost touch with him, it was hard to reach him on the phone in Rakhine State, where connectivity has largely been severed because of chaos from Myanmar’s civil war.

His brother-in-law, Nur Mohammed, said, “The whole block is praying for him.”