FINALLY, WATER
Without food and water for weeks, some of more than 700 migrants from Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) use bottles and plates to catch rainwater while crammed in a warehouse after being rescued at sea. The migrants were kept in a temporary camp in Burma’s Rakhine state.
RANGOON—Burma (Myanmar) said on Thursday that persecution of its Rohingya Muslim population was not the cause of Southeast Asia’s migrant crisis, a day after the United States called on the country to give full rights to the minority to help end the exodus.
President Barack Obama said this week that Burma needed to end discrimination against the Rohingya if it was to succeed in its transition to a democracy, as Washington upped the pressure on the country to tackle what it sees as one of the root causes of a migration that the region has struggled to cope with.
Burma does not recognize its 1.1 million Rohingya as citizens, rendering them effectively stateless. Almost 140,000 were displaced in deadly clashes with Buddhists in the country’s western Rakhine state in 2012.
It had been portrayed that discrimination and persecution were causing people to leave Rakhine State, Burma’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wunna Maung Lwin told diplomats and international agencies in Rangoon, but that was “not true.”
He pointed to the number of Bangladeshis on board a migrant boat that landed in May as proof that the influx of boat people was a regional problem linked to human trafficking.
“This incident... has shown to the region as well as the international community this is not the root cause,” he said.
The boat he referred to was intercepted by Burma’s Navy last month. Burma has said 200 of the 208 people aboard were economic migrants from Bangladesh.
Rohingya also aboard
But a Reuters investigation found that 150 to 200 Rohingya had also been aboard that boat, but were spirited away by people smugglers in the week before the Navy brought it to shore.
Tareque Muhammad, deputy chief of mission at the Bangladesh embassy in Rangoon, told Reuters that only 150 people from that boat had been identified and documented as Bangladeshis.
Zaw Aye Maung, the Rangoon region ethnic Rakhine affairs minister, told reporters after the same briefing that if genocide was taking place in Rakhine state, then it was against ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
“We are now in danger of being overrun by these Bangladeshis,” said Zaw Aye Maung.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s leader, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, said on Friday his government was seriously committed to tackling the illicit trade in people and vowed no letup in its crackdown, announcing June 5 as a “National Anti-human Trafficking Day.”