Wednesday 20 Apr 2016 - 19:26 Makkah mean time-13-7-1437
Image from Ennahar Newspaper
Shipwreck, Burma (IINA) - Twenty members of the Muslim Rohingya minority, deprived of many rights in Burma, died Tuesday in a shipwreck, according to the UN sources. The UN called on Wednesday for "a solution" to the issue of this minority, Ennahar Newspaper reported.
"There are many dead or missing Rohingyas, including children. We must find a solution," Yanghee Lee, Special Rapporteur of the UN for Burma, responded in a tweet.
No official death toll has so far been announced. A local government official confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that the passengers of the boat, "overwhelmed by a wave", are "Bangladeshis".
The word "Rohingya" is taboo in Burma, even for the government of the Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Su Kyi, which came into power a few weeks ago. Neither Suu Kyi nor Burmese official ever utters the internationally accepted term "Rohingya", referring to them as "Bangladeshis".
Many of them live in camps in Rakhine State, western Burma, in dismal conditions denounced by the international community.
They have no access to education, health system or the labor market. Even their movements are very limited -including to hospitals-, and subject to approval.
The latter is the cause of Tuesday's tragedy: 60 Rohingyas on board were traveling from their Sin Tet Maw camp to the large neighboring city of Sittwe. "They had been allowed to visit for the day in Sittwe to go to market," said Pierre Peron, spokesman of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the United Nations, based in Rangoon.
SM/IINA
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