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Ethnic
Rohingya boat people from Burma sit at Malahayati harbour after they were
rescued in the Indonesia's Aceh province on February 16, 2011. © 2011 Reuters
By
AFP +
DVB
27 February 2013
Fishermen have rescued more than 100 ethnic Rohingya asylum
seekers from Burma who were found drifting in a wooden boat off western
Indonesia, an official said Wednesday.
The 121 Rohingya, including six women and two children, were
found adrift late Tuesday by fishermen around 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the
village of Cot Trueng, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island in Aceh
province.
“Their boat ran out of petrol as they tried to sail from Myanmar
[Burma] to Thailand,” village chief Mukhtar Samsyah told AFP , adding that they
had fled Burma to escape sectarian conflict.
He said the Rohingya were found in a weak condition but had
recovered after being given food, water and a place to sleep.
“They’ve all been sent to an immigration detention centre in
Lhokseumawe city,” he said.
The UN considers the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim ethnic group,
one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, while Burma views its
roughly 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, denying them
citizenship.
According to government statistics, Buddhist-Muslim unrest in
Arakan has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced since
June 2012.
Almost 6,000 Rohingya fleeing the violence have illegally
entered Thai waters since October, the Thai army said earlier this month.
In late January, Thailand’s navy blocked more than 200 Rohingya
boat people from entering the kingdom as part of a new crackdown on the
refugees, under which they will be given food and water but barred from landing
if their boat is seaworthy.
The tougher stance came after Thai authorities said they were
investigating allegations that army officials were involved in the trafficking
of Rohingya.
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