Myanmar, under international pressure to help resolve the humanitarian migrant crisis in Southeast Asia, on Friday announced that it had seized a boat carrying more than 200 migrants and detained all the passengers.
A government statement said the 208 passengers, including 10 teenagers, were Bangladeshis younger than 40 and were on a boat owned by a Thai citizen. A second boat, which was also seized, belonged to a Burmese man and had no passengers, the statement said.
Myanmar’s navy seized the boats on Thursday after finding them in the Bay of Bengal about 6.4km from Maungdaw Township in Rakhine State, on the country’s western coast, the government said. Rakhine is the primary home of the Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority ethnic group who have fled ethnic violence and persecution there by the tens of thousands during the last several years, often paying smugglers to take them to other countries, mainly Malaysia and Bangladesh, in rickety wooden boats.
Photo: Reuters
The statement said 17 crew members and three Bangladeshi interpreters had also been detained.
“All of them are from Bangladesh,” Burmese Presidential Office Deputy Director-General Zaw Htay said. “Now all the boat people and crew members are under investigation, and we are treating them well from a humanitarian point of view.”
“We will send them back after all is clear,” he added. “We need cooperation among regional countries, particularly Bangladesh.”
He said it was the second time the navy had seized smugglers’ boats in Myanmar’s waters.
Photographs posted online by the Burmese Ministry of Information showed scores of men crowded inside a wooden boat. They appeared frightened as security forces examined them.
Some Rohingya in Maungdaw disputed the government’s account, saying the detained passengers included members of their minority group.
Speaking by telephone from Maungdaw, on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, Hafizul, a Rohingya who works with an international non-governmental organization there, said: “Not only Bangladeshis, but Rohingya villagers from Maungdaw and surrounding areas were on the boat, too. They are now detained at a village school near Maungdaw.”
On Wednesday, Malaysia and Indonesia, reversing their previous positions, announced that they would temporarily shelter thousands of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh adrift in the Andaman Sea and the Strait of Malacca. However, the countries the migrants fled did not participate in the talks that led to the agreement, and the lack of regional cooperation on the crisis has frustrated international aid agencies and governments.
The Burmese government, dominated by Buddhists, denies that the Muslim Rohingya are a distinct ethnic group, calling them Bengalis, which implies that they are from Bangladesh. It considers them illegal immigrants and refuses to give them citizenship, even though some of the 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar have roots that go back decades.
Many Rohingya were placed in camps across Rakhine after sectarian violence in Myanmar in 2012 left more than 300 people dead.
“This year, more Rohingya are fleeing because they feel hopeless” after three years of living in temporary camps, Hafizul said.
On Thursday, US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, to discuss the crisis with Burmese President Thein Sein and the country’s military commander in chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
The office of Min Aung Hlaing said he told Blinken that the military “doesn’t want to see the crisis of the boat people, and Myanmar doesn’t force citizens to flee.”
Blinken shared Washington’s concerns about the crisis and urged Myanmar to work with regional partners to address it, according to a statement by the US embassy.
The Rohingya have become prey to smugglers as they flee the “desperate conditions they face in Rakhine State,” reporters quoted Blinken as saying.
However, Rakhine State Chief Minister Maung Maung Ohn told reporters after meeting UN officials on Friday: “I am disappointed by, and completely disagree and reject such unfounded allegations by the United States. This is human trafficking, not political or religious discrimination at all.”
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