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Aussies Boost Burma Aid, Canada Suggests Face to Face Rohingya Talks

By Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian
Phuket_Wan:
 February 21, 2013
PHUKET: Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has promised an extra $2.5 million in humanitarian assistance in Burma's Rakhine state, where the Rohingya tragedy continues to unfold.

While the additional aid will be welcome, people in displaced person's camps and ghettos where Rohingya are corralled in segregation say that most international aid so far has been diverted away from the outcast Muslim minority.

Mr Carr, in Bangkok today on a visit to the region, offered support to Thailand in accommodating Rohingya who are fleeing by boat and landing in Thailand on the way to Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.

The suggestion came a day after a Canadian envoy proposed face-to-face talks between Burma and Thailand to attempt to resolve the Rohingya issue. 

Canada's Ambassador to Thailand, Philip Calvert, made the suggestion in talks with Thailand's Interior Minister, Jarapong Rungsuwan, Thai media reported. 

Khun Jarapong told Mr Calvert that about 1700 Rohingya were being held in Thailand at present, spread all over the country, with as many as 200 in some centres. 

These Rohingya, apprehended on boats or ''rescued'' from the secret Malaysian border camps of people-traffickers in January, are being held pending a decision on their status and their future. 

In Burma, where authorities tacitly condone the ethnic cleansing of the unwanted stateless minority, the first attacks against Muslims outside of Rakhine state have been recorded. 

An angry mob of 300 Buddhists attacked a Muslim school and several businesses in a suburb near Rangoon earlier this week, according to local sources.

The Democratic Voice of Burma online said it was the second attack within days, adding: ''This is the first major episode of religious violence to spill into the former capital, which also hosts a large Muslim population.''

Elsewhere in the region, Sri Lankan authorities were deciding what to do with 31 men and a boy who told rescuers that as food and water ran low, they pushed the bodies of 98 companions over the side of their flimsy boat.

The group, believed to be Rohingya, have said they do not wish to be sent back to Burma. The reason why they took to the sea is because life has become unbearable there. 

A local Burmese envoy have been quoted as saying Burma doesn't want the boatpeople back anyway.

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