By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar has returned to Bangladesh another group of people found on abandoned boats near its shores recently, state media announced Tuesday.
The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that 159 Bangladeshi nationals were handed over at a border crossing in Rakhine state on Monday after being verified by Bangladeshi authorities.
Monday’s handover was due to take place on July 30, the report said, but was postponed due to floods which have taken a severe toll in Rakhine and the rest of the country, swamping villages and killing at least 100 people.
More than 800 people, including children, were found aboard two stranded boats near Myanmar’s shores in recent months amid a crisis that saw thousands from Bangladesh and Myanmar abandoned by people smugglers.
Many were persecuted Rohingya Muslims, who live mainly in Rakhine state and are denied citizenship by the Buddhist-majority government because they are officially regarded as interlopers from Bangladesh, despite evidence of the minority living in the country for generations.
Others were Bangladeshi citizens hoping to escape extreme poverty by finding jobs in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries.
The Myanmar government has accused some of the migrants caught up in the boat crisis of pretending to be Rohingya in order to get aid from humanitarian agencies. Buddhist extremists have also held protests in the commercial capital of Yangon branding the boat people as a foreign threat.
The discovery of the two boats led to diplomatic wrangling as neither Bangladesh nor Myanmar appeared willing to accept the migrants as their own citizens.
Bangladesh has since accepted 501 of those found on-board both boats.
“The remaining boat people will be handed over to the country of origin upon completion of the verification process,” added the front-page New Light report, which featured a picture supplied by the information ministry of men and women carrying bags above their heads flanked by armed security personnel.
