Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar officials have sentenced 112 Rohingya, including dozen children, between two and five years in prison for attempting to travel to Malaysia “without documents”.
A group was arrested previous month in the southern Ayeyarwady region and sentenced on January 6, according to a report by the international New Light of Myanmar, which cited local police of Myanmar.
Kids without documents transferred to ‘youth training school’
The kids were transferred to a “youth training school” near commercial hub Yangon on January 8, the newspaper reported, without giving further information. A report referred to a group as “Bengalis,” using the pejorative word for the Muslim minority, who have been denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Myanmar or often require permission to travel.
The military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing into the neighbouring Bangladesh with harrowing stories of murder, rape and arson. Myanmar has faced genocide accusations at the UN top court following the mass exodus.
Thousands of the Rohingya risk their lives each year, making perilous journeys from camps in Bangladesh and Myanmar to reach Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia.
On Sunday, a wooden boat carrying nearly 200 Rohingya refugees, a majority of them women and children, landed on Indonesia’s western coast, the fifth to arrive since November, according to authorities.
More than 2,000 Rohingya are believed to have attempted the risky journey last year, according to the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR.
