Myanmar authorities allow hundreds of boat people to disembark in Rakhine state

2015-06-03

Boat people rescued by the Myanmar navy wait in a camp in Maungtaw township, Rakhine state, May 23, 2015. RFA

Myanmar authorities on Wednesday transferred more than 700 "boat people" who had been kept adrift at sea for days, to an area where other such migrants are being housed, prompting a group of nationalist Buddhist monks to stage a fresh protest urging the government to send them elsewhere.

The Myanmar navy took the 727 migrants to Hainggyi Island in the Irrawaddy division of southwestern Myanmar after it found the overloaded fishing boat in the Andaman Sea on Friday. Some of those on board were ethnic Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar, while most were Bangladeshis fleeing economic hardship.

Authorities took the boat people to Kanyinchaung village, Maungtaw township, near the border with Bangladesh in western Rakhine state and then on to Taungpyo Letwae township, where 208 other boat people are being housed, said Hla Thein, chairman of the Information and Documentation Committee of Rakhine State.

"We will ask the Bangladeshi consulate to verify their identities," he told RFA's Myanmar Service. "As far as I know, the Bangladeshi authorities have been working on sending them back to Bangladesh as the Rakhine state government has pushed them to take these people back to their home country as soon as possible."

Two hundred migrants from the first group, which was detained on May 21 off Myanmar's coast near Maungtaw, have been identified as citizens of neighboring Bangladesh.

The Myanmar government is providing food, clothing and health care to all the boat people, as it seeks to determine the origins of those of the new group, he said.

Rakhine residents are unhappy about having nearly 1,000 boat people in their state, Hla Thein said.

"They became angry and asked us why these people were sent to Rakhine state," he said.

Monks stage protest

The arrival of the new group of boat people in Rakhine state prompted the country's nationalist monk organization Ma Ba Tha to stage a protest in Pathein, Irrawaddy division, demanding the removal of the rescued migrants from Myanmar.

About 70 monks and locals marched from the town's Shwemudaw pagoda to city hall.

"We protested today to show that we don't want or accept these boat people in our land because they are not included among Myanmar's 135 ethnic groups," said Parmaukka, a monk from Ma Ba Tha. "Also, the United Nations urged Myanmar to accept these Bengalis in the country, and we don't accept this as well."

Myanmar's government views the Rohingya, who number roughly 1.1 million people in the country, as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and refers to them as "Bengalis," although many have lived there for generations.

"We feel that he U.N. has interfered in our country's internal affairs," Parmaukka said. "If the U.N. considers it a humanitarian issue, we would like to let them know that they should take these boat people to their countries."

More than 1,000 monks and activists had staged another protest on May 27 in the commercial capital Yangon, urging the government not to accept the stateless Rohingya.

Myanmar blames the boat people crisis on human trafficking and smuggling networks and has rejected claims by human rights activists, experts and the Rohingya themselves that its discriminatory policies towards the Muslim minority have caused them to flee.

Between 3,500 and 4,000 migrants have landed in Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand since the Thai government last month began cracking down on people smugglers, causing them to abandon at sea boatloads of migrants escaping persecution and economic hardship in their home countries.

Reported by Thinn Thiri and Khin Pyae Son of RFA's Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Link to original story on RFA website