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Thailand will deport Rohingya Muslim asylum seekers
Thai officials say Rohingya Muslim migrants allegedly fleeing violence and persecution in western Burma must be sent back to their homeland. The 73 refugees, including women and children, were discovered drifiting in a small, overcrowded boat off the Thai resort town of Phuket, short of their final destination of Malaysia.

Thai authorities seized the boat, which had been at sea for 13 days, and gave the refugees food and supplies on Tuesday. But local media reports on Wednesday say they have been arrested and ordered to return to Burma by land.

Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, says Thai authorities must come up with a better policy for dealing with boat people. He said, "For the first time, Thai authorities have intercepted a boat, filled up not with young Rohingya men seeking work in Malaysia, but families with young children and women. They are traveling together claiming they are escaping persecution, human rights violations, and violence in their homeland."

The latest group of asylum seekers were headed for Malaysia, which has become a common destination for Rohingya refugees. On Sunday, about 450 Rohingya landed in Malaysia after a boat journey that left one of them dead.

Rohingya are fleeing Burma's western Rakhine, or Arakan, state, where violence in recent months has killed dozens and displaced hundreds of thousands. Rights groups accuse Burma's government of systematic persecution of the members of the Rohingya, considered to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Posted by: ryuge 2013-01-03
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=359278