Twenty-six members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority drowned when their boat capsized as they were trying to flee to Bangladesh, witnesses said, an accident likely to compound fears that the largely Muslim minority is facing a new round of genocide.
Approximately 5,000 minority Rohingya Muslims attempting to flee from this week’s fighting in western Myanmar have been waiting for several days near the Naf River for an opportunity to cross into Bangladesh, residents said.
Rohingya are being brought into southeastern Bangladesh by smugglers as fighting between ethnic rebel groups and junta-aligned forces worsens next-door in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, said officials and border crossers interviewed by BenarNews.
A court in Indonesia’s Aceh province sentenced three Rohingya to years in prison Wednesday for smuggling more than 100 Rohingya refugees in December, although one of the defendants argued that he and the others were victims seeking shelter.
Although three-quarters of migrants surveyed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand said they suffered some type of abuse while leaving their homelands via people-smuggling networks, nearly half said they would do it again, the United Nations said in a report released Tuesday.
Malaysian immigration officials on Friday reported separating Rohingya from other detainees after 131 refugees in custody broke out of detention this week and one was struck and killed by a car.
Bangladesh is not doing enough to protect Rohingya from increasing violence by armed groups and criminal gangs operating in the refugee camps near the country’s border with Myanmar, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
At least five members of rival Rohingya militant groups were killed in a gunfight Friday at a refugee camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, police and other sources said.
Bangladesh has seen a spike in dengue cases and deaths in less than a month, according to government health figures released on Monday that did not include infections in Rohingya refugee camps, where cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been climbing as well.
Bangladesh-based Rohingya who were taken to Myanmar’s Rakhine state Friday to see preparations for refugee repatriation said they wouldn’t return without citizenship rights, recognition of their Rohingya identity, and a guarantee that they could resettle in their home villages.