A top U.S. diplomat urged Myanmar’s president on Thursday to help the thousands of persecuted Muslim Rohingya migrants who have fled the western part of the country and have been stuck in waters of Southeast Asia, a high-level Myanmar official said.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Thein Sein for more than an hour in the capital Naypyidaw, said Ye Htut, the president’s spokesman and minister of information.
“The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State urged us to help provide humanitarian assistance to the boat people,” he said.
Thein Sein and other top-level officials at the meeting, including Minister of Home Affairs Lt. Gen. Ko Ko, Minister of Defense Lt. Gen. Wai Lwin, President’s Office Minister Aung Min and Foreign Affairs Minister Wunna Maung Lwin, told the American official the government would take care of boat people who were determined to have come from Myanmar.
The government would also help boat people found in Myanmar’s sea territory and send them back to their home countries, he added.
“We pointed out that it is important for all countries in the region to vanquish human trafficking gangs to solve the boat-people’s problem,” Ye Htut said.
Thein Sein appointed Vice President Nyan Tun to start determining if the refugees found in Myanmar’s sea area are from Myanmar or other countries and discuss the situation with other related ministries, he said.
The government officials and Blinken also talked about the upcoming general election in Myanmar, amending the 2008 constitution, and improving relations between Myanmar and the U.S., which said it was ready to accept some of the migrants.
Blinken also met with Shwe Mann, speaker of parliament, and Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party.
The Myanmar government also said it would send representatives to a regional meeting in Bangkok next week in an effort to resolve the humanitarian crisis of boat people stranded at sea for months and tackle the issue of human trafficking.
Ready to cooperate
Myanmar officials held separate talks on Thursday with the visiting foreign ministers of Malaysia and Indonesia.
“We are ready to cooperate with other governments to resolve the ongoing problems through constructive engagement and on humanitarian grounds,” said Zaw Htay, director of the president's office, as reported by the Associated Press.
Malaysia has ordered search-and-rescue missions for thousands of Muslim Rohingya and Bangladeshi economic migrants currently adrift.
Malaysia and Indonesia said Wednesday they would accept boat people for one year until they could be resettled or repatriated.
The two countries and Thailand have come under heavy fire in recent days for refusing to accept boats overloaded with exhausted, starving passengers fleeing poverty or persecution. Although Thailand has not agreed to take in boat people, it has pledged not to push them away.
More than 3,000 boat people have landed in the three countries in recent weeks, most of them Rohingya.
Sai Mauk Kham, Myanmar's other vice president who is also chairman of the central committee for development and stability of Rakhine state, home to Myanmar's Rohingya, urged local authorities on Thursday to do their utmost to prevent human trafficking and transnational crimes in the state, according to the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
Myanmar has begun to repatriate more than 500 trafficking victims who were forced onto fishing boats in Indonesia, after they were found to be citizens, Ye Htut said, according to the newspaper.
The United Nations estimates that 130,000 ethnic Rohingya, who are Muslim, have fled Myanmar by sea since a violent and deadly clash with majority Buddhists in mid-2012. Others, who were displaced by the violence, remain housed in camps in Myanmar.
Those who have fled by sea have fell victim to human trafficking in the Bay of the Bengal after paying smugglers to transport them to other countries, only to be intercepted by traffickers who have held them captive and demanded ransom for their continued passage.
Reported by Myo Thant Khine for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.