Mystery surrounds location of migrant boat in Myanmar

By Joshua Carroll

YANGON, Myanmar

 Mystery surrounds the fate of a people smuggling boat found last week in Myanmar waters with 727 migrants on board -- many of them thought to be Rohingya Muslims.

The country's Ministry of Information said in a Facebook post Friday that its navy had discovered the migrants -- including "74 women and 45 children" -- crammed on a fishing trawler. It added that the migrants would be towed to an island.

Reports have since said that the boat is now being sent to Bangladesh, though Bangladeshi authorities have said they will only accept people who are genuine citizens of their country.

Htike Htike, co-founder of the Bangkok-based Equal Harmony Together project, told Anadolu Agency that despite Myanmar's claims that those on board are "all Bangladeshis," the presence of women and children -- supported by pictures -- suggest otherwise.

The pictures "throw into question those claims as women and children rarely travel from Bangladesh," Htike Htike said.

Complicating matters is the fact Myanmar referred to those on board the boat as "Bengali."

Myanmar does not recognize its Rohingya Muslims as Rohingya, preferring to use the term "Bengali" which suggests that they are from Bangladesh across its western border.

Many Rohingya have for years been fleeing Myanmar by sea to escape persecution from both the authorities and extremist Buddhists.

"It is highly unlikely they are all Bangladeshi," Lilianne Fan of the Overseas Development Institute told Anadolu Agency.

Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project added Wednesday that there were "conflicting reports over the fate of the boat."

"Sources from Myanmar suggested they might be resettled in Sittwe but the government have said they would repatriate them back to Bangladesh," she told Anadolu Agency.

If the people are Rohingya -- as suspected -- the situation underlines Myanmar's stance throughout the boat people crisis.

Since May 1 -- when people trafficking camps, later found to be the sites of graves, were discovered in Thailand -- Myanmar has refused to acknowledge that persecution of the Rohingya is the root cause of the boat exodus. Officials maintain that traffickers are to blame.

Myanmar on Friday complained of "finger pointing" at a regional summit in Thailand to discuss the crisis, and urged countries to work together rather than place blame.

Myanmar's delegates at the meeting also agreed to allow the UN's refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) access to migrants.

But so far aid agencies have been prevented from travelling to see the 727 people found by the navy. The navy also briefly detained and then turned away a team of journalists who attempted to reach the boat earlier this week.

On Sunday, Myanmar tried to deflect attention to Thailand by announcing that its eastern neighbor had refused the migrants permission to land before they were found abandoned off the Irrawaddy delta.

Thailand's Nation newspaper reported Myanmar's Eleven Media as saying that on arrival in Thailand, the migrants had said that they failed to meet their contact and tried to avoid the authorities, but were instead sent back to sea and told to return to Bangladesh.

Many of the migrants are attempting to travel to Malaysia on trafficking vessels, the smugglers using Thailand as a transit stop where they frequently imprisoned the migrants for ransom.

"Thailand put these people on boats and sent them out of Thai waters," the report quoted an unnamed naval officer as saying.

"It's been 10 days since they left Thailand, according to the migrants. The navy is now sending them to the Haigyi island naval port. After interrogating them, we will make detailed plans about what to do next," he added.

Thailand has since said it will help, but not harbor, the thousands of boat people --- Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis -- who remain at sea looking to land on Southeast Asian shores.

Malaysia and Indonesia, meanwhile, have said that they will take them in for one year, ascertain which are asylum seekers and which are economic migrants, and then the international community will find homes for them.

On Tuesday, International Organization for Migration spokesman Leonard Doyle said that the fate of those on board the boat highlighted the very issue at the heart of Southeast Asia's boat people crisis.

"We are seeing that there is a boat load of migrants (some 727 crowded aboard the vessel) which apparently [is] being escorted towards Bangladesh by Myanmar authorities,” he told reporters.

“[This] takes us back to the top, which occupied so much over the past couple of weeks, about these smuggled migrants not being given due places to land and continuing to suffer while they are aboard these vessels." 

                        

* Anadolu Agency Correspondents CS Thana in Bangkok and Betul Yuruk in Geneva contributed to this story