Rohingya Muslims attempting to leave Myanmar via a boat that was intercepted by the Myanmar navy last December in the Andaman Sea has been transferred to Rakhine state, a coastal forces commander and state immigration minister said Friday, January 10. Their whereabouts is now unknown.
“We sent these 172 Muslims to Sittwe on January 8 by navy vessel No. 617,” Colonel Thant Zin Oo, regional chief of the Coastal Command, told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
The 172 Rohingya left a detention centre where they were being held on an island and were being taken to Rakhine’s capital Sittwe, though Thant ZinOo said he does not know where they will be sent once they arrive there or if any further action will be taken against them.
The group was accompanied by 42 officials from the military, the police, and the health, immigration, and general administration departments, said Kyaw Min, minister of Rakhine state’s Immigration and Human Resources Ministry.
“I don’t think they have arrived yet in Sittwe,” he said. “It will take at least three or four days to get there.”
“We haven’t heard any news,” he added. “If they arrive there, they will have to inform the Rakhine state government and then they will be ordered about what they should do next.”
Immigration officials in Sittwe will check the members of the group to determine whether they are from Rakhine or Bangladesh and will “do whatever they have to,” Kyaw Min said.
RFA was unable to reach Win Myint, Rakhine’s minister of municipal affairs, for comment.
The Myanmar Navy discovered the boat with the 172 Rohingya on December 15 in waters off the country’s southern tip, about 150 nautical miles west of Kawthaung town in Thanintharyi Region. Military officials believe that those aboard had run ran away from refugee camps in Bangladesh.
They were picked up just days after Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi defended the country before the U.N.’s top court in The Netherlands on genocide charges for the army’s alleged expulsion of more than 740,000 Rohingya Muslims in 2017.
Aye Lwin, a Muslim community leader working toward interfaith unity in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar told RFA in an earlier report that authorities should treat the Rohingya humanely by returning them to their homes without taking action against them. Otherwise, they would risk looking bad for punishing Muslims for running away from oppression and discrimination.
Activist Nickey Diamond from the Southeast Asia-based NGO Fortify Rights told RFA on December 22 that Myanmar authorities should issue travel documents for the Rohingya so that they can go wherever they want rather than being forced to return to Rakhine state.
Myanmar views the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and systematically discriminates against them by denying them citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to jobs, health care, and education. (Source: RFA)