95 Rohingyas face jail in Myanmar
AFP, Pathein, Myanmar
Nearly 100 Rohingya appeared in a Myanmar court yesterday after being arrested for trying to flee persecution, their lawyer said, as leader Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the UNs top court to deny allegations of a genocidal campaign against the ethnic minority.
One-by-one, the weary detainees stepped down from a police van at the courthouse in the western Myanmar city of Pathein.
Their crime was to leave their home townships without permission from authorities.
Rohingya in Rakhine state live under tight restrictions with little access to healthcare, education or livelihoods in conditions Amnesty International brands as apartheid.
For years Rohingya have taken to boats, trains and buses in attempts to get out, risking everything in the process.
The 95 people, including 25 children, each paid several hundred dollars for a chance at a better life, lawyer Thazin Myat Myat Win told AFP.
Some even sold their labour in advance to pay the broker fees, she added. Instead they likely face two years in prison for violating the immigration act.
They were arrested November 29 after travelling by boat from Rakhine to a southern beach where buses were waiting to take them to the commercial capital Yangon.
Their court appearance came as former rights icon Suu Kyi denied genocidal intent in her defence of Myanmars military operation against the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
On Tuesday the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat through gruesome testimony of the violence suffered by Rohingya in the bloody military crackdown in 2017 that forced some 740,000 to flee to Bangladesh.
The Gambia, on behalf of dozens of Muslim countries, accuses Buddhist-majority Myanmar of genocide.
