Escalating plight for the Rohingya

Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar are experiencing hard time, as Thailand is pushing some boat people back out to sea while Myanmar has rejected a request from Bangladesh to immediately begin accepting back Muslim refugees living in camps across the border.

"President Thein Sein said that Myanmar stands ready to receive the refugees from Bangladesh by our four rules," presidential spokesman Ye Htut said on Facebook, referring to rules for citizenship that include proof that both parents were Myanmar citizens. 

Bangladesh is trying to restart a repatriation process that stalled in 2005 to return Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar during the past two decades. But the Myanmar government and the mostly Buddhist ethnic community of the western frontier state of Rakhine reject the Muslim group's claim to citizenship, and refer to them as "Bengalis." 

Thein Sein and Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid met in Beijing on Sunday ahead of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting.

"He (Thein Sein) said that it's impossible to receive them back urgently," Ye Htut said. 

Rohingya do not qualify for full Myanmar citizenship by birth as their ethnic identity is not recognised under the country's 1982 citizenship law. Myanmar has agreed to receive more than 2,000 refugees from Bangladesh whose claims have been verified, although the government has disputed Bangladeshi announcements calling the refugees Rohingya. There are more than 200,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, including about 30,000 who are documented and staying in two official camps in Cox's Bazar, according to the UN Refugee Agency and the Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Commission in Bangladesh.

In another development, a large number of Rohingya have fled Myanmar recently. 

"On average around 900 people left by boat from the middle of last month. We saw a major maritime exodus of nearly 10,000 people," said Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group, adding that increasing desperation was one reason for the departures.

Around 259 people were found at sea on Saturday and were arrested for illegal entry. 

Authorities in Thailand's Kapoe district said it was unclear whether any of the group were Rohingya but interviews with some of the group showed they were heading for Malaysia to find work or, in the women's' cases, join their husbands.

       The 259 will be put back on boats and sent back to Myanmar, said Police Colonel Sanya Prakobphol, head of Kapoe district police.

        "They are Muslims from Myanmar ... They are illegal migrants," Sanya told Reuters by telephone.

        "If they come in then we must push them back ... once they have crossed the sea border into Myanmar then that's considered pushing them back. What they do next is their problem."

        Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state since 2012, when violent clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists killed hundreds and made about 140,000 homeless.

        Many were Rohingya, who now often live in apartheid-like conditions and have little or no access to jobs, schools or healthcare.

        The boats often sail from Myanmar and Bangladesh to Thailand where, as Reuters reported last year, human trafficking-gangs hold thousands of boat people in brutal jungle camps until relatives pay ransoms to secure their release.

        Testimonies from Bangladeshi and Rohingya survivors in an October Reuters Special Report provided evidence of a dramatic shift in human-trafficking tactics.

        Sanya said the 259 people were currently being held at a community hall and that his team were "looking after them like relatives" but that they would soon be put back on boats.

        "Who will feed them? I'm struggling day to day to feedthem," said Sanya.

        "No country wants an outsider to come in to their house."

        Thailand was downgraded in June to the lowest category in the US State Department's annual ranking of the world's worst human-trafficking centres, putting it in the same category as North Korea and the Central African Republic.

        The same month, the Thai military vowed to "prevent and suppress human trafficking", after having seized power from an elected government on May 22.