Arakan News Agency
Surprising numbers of Rohingya people have been leaving Myanmar on boats for Thailand and Malaysia following a campaign of arrests, atrocities and persecuted, said by a leading NGO.
“In one week we have seen 8,000 Rohingya leaving northern Rakhine state — the amount of people who left the region per month in 2013,” Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project, told Anadolu Agency.
Last week’s flight is believed to be the largest since violence erupted between the Rohingya minority and Buddhists in western Myanmar two years ago.
“Myanmar police let the boats come to the estuary of the Naf river in daylight and have even stopped asking for money from the Rohingya before they embark,” Lewa added, referring to the water frontier between Myanmar and Bangladesh. “It looks as if it is planned.”
While the number of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar increases every year as the monsoon approaches to an end, there are other factors that explain the unusually large exodus this year, she said.
Citing a recent series of arrests of community and religious leaders by local authorities, Lewa claimed some had died under torture, which had “provoked a sort of panic.”
Source: World Bulletin
