TEMPO.CO, Myanmar - At least eight Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar were among some 200 migrants rescued from a trafficking boat by the Myanmar navy on Thursday, according to interviews conducted by Reuters, contradicting official accounts that all onboard were from Bangladesh.
Myanmar portrayed the rescue operation as a proof that thousands of 'boat people' were not persecuted Rohingya from Myanmar, denying it discriminates against the minority and resisting pressure to help solve the problem.
Southeast Asia is grappling with a humanitarian crisis involving thousands of people trafficked from Myanmar and Bangladesh into Malaysia and Indonesia. After a crackdown disrupted smuggling routes, many are now trapped at sea on what the United Nations has described as 'floating coffins'.
"This clearly show 'Boat People are not from Myanmar', strong evidence," Zaw Htay, a senior official of the office of the president said in a Facebook post announcing the rescue of the boat on Friday.
But on a visit to a remote village in northwest Myanmar, where more than 200 rescued men were being fed and taken care of at an Islamic school, Reuters interviewed a group of Rohingya Muslims from the village of Kyauk Taw in Rakhine state.
"We had no jobs and nothing to lose. So we boarded the boat," said Marmot Rarbi, 23. He said the traffickers let the eight Rohingya men on the boat for free, but later demanded 6,500 Malaysian ringgit for smuggling them to Malaysia.
Rarbi said he was on the boat for more than three months.
Thousands of Rohingya have boarded trafficking ships.
Most of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya, an ethnic minority living in western Myanmar, are stateless and live in apartheid-like conditions. Almost 140,000 were displaced in deadly clashes with Buddhists in the state of Rakhine in 2012.
REUTERS
