13 January, 2023: Rohingya refugees fleeing from Bangladesh and Myanmar captured and sentenced to prison.
116 Rohingya refugees who fled camps in Bangladesh in an attempt to reach Malaysia were found guilty of traveling without documentation and sentenced by a court run by Myanmar's military junta to between two and five years in prison.
57 men, 47 women, and 12 children were captured on December 20 from two motorboats off an island in the Ayeyarwady, close to the southern shore of Myanmar. While waiting for two motorboats they anticipated would help them begin their journey to Malaysia, the boat was stopped. Based on whether the gang had left camps in Bangladesh or Rakhine, sentences for the group ranged from two to five years. The ones who fled from Bangladesh received 5 years of sentence and the ones who escaped Rakhine, received 2 years. The children were taken to "training schools."
According to Daniel Sullivan of Refugees International, the junta's own refusal to acknowledge Rohingya as citizens is the root of the accusations made against them for traveling without documentation. The 1982 citizenship law in Myanmar does not officially recognise the minority population. This restricts their ability to move around freely and receive basic amenities.
In an effort to flee the military's violent oppression, which is currently the subject of a genocide inquiry by the UN's international court of justice, close to 75,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017. There are still 600,000 Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine state, 142,000 of whom are detained in restricted camps.
The treatment of the Rohingya has gotten worse, according to Aung Kyaw Moe, a human rights adviser to Myanmar's government-in-exile, the National Unity Government, after military troops seized power in a coup in 2021.
More than 150 Rohingya have arrived on Indonesian shores in three boats over the past month, but the location of a fourth boat carrying more than 180 people is still unknown.
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