In 2015, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people were forcibly displaced from their villages and IDP camps in Rakhine State, Myanmar, due to sectarian violence. Nearly one million fled to neighboring Bangladesh and some travelled to Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by rickety boats via the waters of the Strait of Malacca, Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that 50,000 people had left by boat from January to March in 2015 by migrant smugglers. There are claims that, while on their journey, around 100 people died in Indonesia,[8] 200 in Malaysia, and 10 in Thailand, after the traffickers abandoned them at sea.
In October 2015, researchers from the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London released a report drawing on leaked government documents that reveal an increasing "ghettoization, sporadic massacres, and restrictions on movement" on Rohingya people. The researchers suggest that the Myanmar government are in the final stages of an organised process of genocide against the Rohingya and have called upon the international community to redress the situation as such.
