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Showing posts from December 26, 2013

North of Phuket, Rohingya Tell of Killings, Beatings on Nightmare Voyage from Burma

By Alan Morison and Premkamon Ketsara Phuket Wan December 26, 2013 PHUKET: The Burmese Navy handed over a boatload of Rohingya men, women and children to people smugglers who killed 12 and savagely beat many others, survivors revealed today. The group of 139, discovered by residents in a rubber plantation north of Phuket last night, were recovering today after a harrowing 22-day voyage south to Thailand with little food and water. Mostly young men and teenagers, some of the children ranged from two, three and four years old.  Survivors showed recent scars from savage beatings to Phuketwan journalists at a community hall in the port of Kuraburi in Phang Nga province. They were being fed by a group of sympathetic local Muslims for the first time in days.  ''We were all facing death,'' one of the men told Phuketwan. ''The smugglers charged us each 200,000 kyat to make the trip. The boat was quite large and stopped along the way to pick up more passe