YANGON: Myanmar authorities detained 173 ethnic Rohingya aboard a boat off the southern coast, authorities said on Tuesday, amid signs that more members of the Muslim minority group are making perilous sea voyages to escape persecution.
The navy seized the vessel carrying the group, including 22 children, in Tanintharyi Division’s Kawthaung township on Sunday, said military spokesman Tun Tun Nyi. “Our navy found them on a suspicious boat in the sea,” he told Reuters by phone. “The police will proceed according to the law.”
More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape a military-led crackdown that U.N investigators have said was carried out with “genocidal intent” and included mass killings and rapes.
Some 600,000 remain in largely Buddhist Myanmar, confined to camps and villages in the western Rakhine state where they are unable to travel freely or access healthcare and education.
For years, Rohingya on both sides of the border have boarded boats organized by smugglers in the dry months between November and March, when the sea is calm. –Agencies
