Refugees land in Myanmar as escape boat breaks up
YANGON: Scores of Rohingya refugees leaving Bangladeshi camps by boat have accidentally returned to the crisis-hit area of Myanmar they originally fled from, after their vessel broke up on the sea route south.
Around one million Rohingya have fled Myanmar army crackdowns since 2016 for Bangladesh, where they live in cramped, flood-prone camps now being battered by the seasonal monsoon.
On Monday morning a boat carrying 104 Bangladeshis and Rohingya ran into trouble off the coast of Rakhine state, a Myanmar government spokesman said, eventually breaking apart and forcing the passengers to head for shore.
The vessel was believed to be relatively close to the coast, enabling the refugees to survive.
For some it is likely to be an unexpected and unwelcome return to a state they were forced to run from, carrying accounts of atrocities by Myanmar’s army and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
“These Muslim people were going from Bangladesh to Malaysia by the boat owned by a Malaysian man,” spokesman Zaw Htay said on Wednesday.
“Some are Bangladesh citizens, the majority are from the camps... people from Bangladesh who fled,” he said.
Myanmar denies the Rohingya citizenship and officials do not recognise the term, instead labelling them “Bengalis”, shorthand for illegal infiltrators from the neighbouring country.
They were taken to Nga Khu Ya camp in Rakhine’s Muangdaw district — a purpose-built facility meant to process refugees returning under a discredited repatriation deal with Bangladesh.