Workers unload bags of rice from a cargo boat at a jetty in Yangon, Myanmar on Aug. 11, 2022. Myanmar's agricultural export earnings decreased 1.25 percent to about 1.27 billion U.S. dollars year on year in the first four months of the present fiscal year (FY) 2022-2023, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The Southeast Asian country changed its fiscal year from the original October-September to April-March beginning this year.(Photo: Xinhua)

 Southeast Asian politicians called Tuesday for the rescue of a boat carrying as many as 200 Rohingya refugees including women and children stranded at sea for several weeks.

The boat carrying the refugees has been reported in waters close to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

"We urgently call on ASEAN member states and other countries in the region to... launch search and rescue operations," said ex-Indonesian MP Eva Sundari, who is a member of advocacy group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), in a statement.

Charles Santiago, a former Malaysian MP and chairman of APHR, said in the same statement that the delay in rescuing the stranded refugees likely "has already caused untold suffering and loss of life."

The vessel's current location is unknown. But at least one relative of a passenger hoping to reach Malaysia told AFP he was taken to the boat in deep waters by a small fishing trawler from Bangladesh.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said last week that the boat has been in waters since late November.

Noor Habi, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, said her daughter Munuwara Begum was on the stranded boat and had spoken to her sister by walkie talkie.

On December 8, more than 150 Rohingya were rescued near the Thai coast from a waterlogged boat on its way to Indonesia from a refugee camp in Bangladesh, according to the Myanmar side.

AFP