by Jason Motlagh
A large chunk of Abdul Rahman’s home is gone, and so is his oldest son, Shakur. The ethnic Rohingya farmer tore down nearly half his home for scrap needed to secure his son’s passage on a boat bound for Malaysia.

In the wake of bloody sectarian violence last year that left hundreds dead and forced tens of thousands of minority Muslim Rohingya into camps outside the coastal city of Sittwe, Rahman, 52, insists his people are being “strangled” by a Burmese government that does not want them. While foreign donors have supplied basic food rations, checkpoints manned by armed guards prevent the displaced from returning to the paddies and markets their livelihoods depend on. “Even animals can move more freely,” says Rahman.

Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, supported by former Timor-Leste president Ramos-Horta, has pitched in strongly for the persecuted Rohingyas of Myanmar.
“There is evidence that the Rohingya have been in present-day Myanmar since the 8th century,” the two wrote in Huffington Post. “It is incontrovertible that Muslim communities have existed in [Rakhine] State since the 15th century, added to by descendants of Bengalis migrating to Arakan [Rakhine] during colonial times.”
“The minority Muslim Rohingya continue to suffer unspeakable persecution, with more than 1,000 killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes just in recent months, apparently with the complicity and protection of security forces,” the two Nobel laureates wrote.

Editor: Wang Yuanyuan

YANGON/GENEVA: Myanmar boat survivors rescued by Sri Lanka’s navy last week say they floated for 25 days at sea and 97 people died of starvation after Thailand’s navy intercepted and forcibly removed their boat’s engines.

Thirty-two men and a boy now detained at an immigration detention centre near Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, were rescued last Saturday when their dilapidated wooden vessel began sinking while making a perilous journey to Malaysia. The Thai navy has denied the allegation.

The survivors are Rohingya Muslims regarded as illegal immigrants into Myanmar from Bangladesh, and say they do not want to return to Myanmar.

The survivors were suffering from severe dehydration when they were rescued about 250 miles off Sri Lanaka’s east coast.’

Meanwhile, the UN’s refugee agency on Friday raised the alarm over the rising number of boat people perishing in the Indian Ocean, including Rohingya Muslims fleeing communal strife in Myanmar.

By Emily Alpert
By the time their rickety boat was rescued last week off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, nearly a hundred of the weakened passengers had lost their lives – roughly three times as many as survived.

The starving people had endured nearly two months at sea, trying to flee the western state of Myanmar where hundreds were slain last year, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. The Rohingya Muslims say they undertook the arduous journey out of fear for their lives.

The outpouring of Rohingya from western Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps has made the Indian Ocean “one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said Friday. It estimated that last year, nearly 500 out of 13,000 people fleeing by boat in the Bay of Bengal perished. Reports of the dead are still being tallied.

By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison

PHUKET: Eight Rohingya boatpeople have been apprehended on Phuket and police are tonight looking for 14 more said to have landed with them at Surin beach early today.

One group of five men walked along Phuket’s coast road from Surin, a five-star tourist destination, to Kamala, north of Patong, when they came off the boat at 4am.

Kamala Muslims visited the Rohingya today, bringing new clothes, food and water. The men told the visitors that they had been on the water for 28 days sailing south from the troubled township of Sittwe.

According to the 32 survivors, Thailand’s navy intercepted their passage and forcibly removed their boat’s engine
Associated Press in Colombo

Burmese asylum seekers rescued by Sri Lanka’s navy last week said they floated at sea for 25 days and 97 people died of starvation after Thailand’s navy intercepted them and forcibly removed their boat’s engine. The Thai navy has denied the allegation.

Thirty-two men and a boy now held at an immigration detention centre near Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, were rescued last Saturday when their dilapidated wooden vessel began sinking while making a perilous journey to Malaysia.

All are Rohingya Muslims who face heavy discrimination in Burma, and say they do not want to return there.

The survivors were suffering from serious dehydration when they were rescued about 250 miles off Sri Lanka’s east coast. The Sri Lankan navy said it was alerted to the sinking vessel by a fisherman.