Nearly 90 Rohingya asylum seekers have escaped from a crowded Thai immigration centre, after spending eight months in prison for illegally entering the country from neighbouring Burma.
The 87 escapees used knives to file through iron bars and climbed ropes made from tied-together clothes to flee to surrounding woods in the Songkhla province of southern Thailand, where police were still looking for the men.
"The men were detained for many months and tensions were high," Songkhla's police commander Suwit Chernsiri told Reuters.
The group was among some 1,800 Rohingya asylum seekers who have been detained since January across Thailand after fleeing sectarian violence in Burma, where tens of thousands have been displaced since fighting broke out between Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist Rakhine last year.
The escape is the second this month after 30 Rohingya broke out of a Songkhla police cell in early August.
The Rohingya are a stateless group who are denied citizenship in Burma, where authorities consider them Bengali migrants. Bangladesh also refuses to acknowledge them.
Rights groups estimate that as many as 35,000 Rohingya fled Burma and neighbouring Bangladesh by boat from June 2012 to May this year, most of them hoping to reach Muslim-majority Malaysia.
Those who have reached Thailand have been allowed to stay temporarily until a third country is willing to accept them, although thousands more are estimated to have been caught by Thai authorities and pushed back out to sea.
Rights groups claim Rohingya are kept in overcrowded, "inhumane and unsafe" detention centres in Thailand, where men are kept separately from their families, with women and children at risk of being targeted by both Thai and Rohingya human traffickers, who sell them on to neighbouring countries such as Malaysia for considerable fees. Some men are trafficked to work on fishing boats and farms.
Over 200 men, women and children have escaped from detention centres since July, and eight men have died so far while in detention, according to Human Rights Watch.
The jail break comes the same day as a new report highlights a systemic failure by the Burmese government to protect the country's Muslim minority, which comprises roughly 5% of Burma's 60m population.
Over 250,000 people — mostly Muslims — and over 10,000 homes have been destroyed over the past two years due to violent clashes between Burma's Muslims and Buddhists, the Physicians for Human Rights report (pdf) says, with the government not only failing to address major human rights violations but often being complicit in those violations.
This has resulted in violence spreading beyond the Rohingya population and has affected Muslim communities throughout the country, the report adds.
"The Burmese government has not only failed to protect vulnerable groups, but has created a dangerous culture of impunity that fuels human rights violations," said the report's co-author Dr Holly Atkinson.
"These horrific attacks can only be stopped if there is a thorough investigation and prosecution of those responsible, and appropriate steps are taken to protect vulnerable and marginalised groups."
Last week the Thai government discussed a plan to transfer over 1,800 Rohingya to refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border, a move that would further incarcerate a vulnerable group in need of jobs and shelter, rights groups said.
"The Rohingya have fled horrific abuses in Burma that would put many at risk were they to return home," said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "Instead of sticking them in border camps or immigration lockups, the Thai government should consider allowing the Rohingya to remain, work and live under temporary protection."
But many authorities have been less than sympathetic to their plight. Thailand's deputy interior minister Wisarn Techathirawat has described the Rohingya as demonstrating a "feigned pitifulness" who "cry and put on a performance designed to get sympathy" when the media are present.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/rohingya-asylum-seekers-escape-from-thai-immigration-centre/
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