By Joshua Carroll
YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar authorities have arrested a Thai man suspected of owning a people-smuggling boat that was recently discovered with over 208 migrants on board, state media reported Saturday amid a crisis that has seen thousands of them stranded at sea.
Police found the 53-year-old suspect at a teashop in Myanmar’s main city of Yangon “after interrogating 17 sailors and three interpreters” and working with Thai police, the report in the Global New Light of Myanmar said.
Naingnut Patunsantun, who also goes by several Myanmar aliases, “was said to have contacted human trafficking gangs in Bangladesh and trafficked people into Thailand and Malaysia,” added the report, though there were no details about what the man is being charged with.
The arrest follows the discovery Friday of a boat in Myanmar’s delta region with over 700 people on board. The Ministry of Information said the migrants would be towed to an island, but did not give further details.
State media said all the migrants were “Bengali”, a name often used by officials to describe the stateless Rohingya minority because it implies they are recent immigrants from Bangladesh. The Rohingya say their families have been in Myanmar for generations.
Because of the controversy over what name the Rohingya should be given, it is unclear whether the 727 migrants are Bangladeshi, Rohingya, or a mix of both.
Myanmar says it plans to send 200 people from the first boat back to Bangladesh, and state media reports have claimed that the United Nations and others have helped verify their nationalities.
Myanmar has been blamed as the main cause of the current boat people crisis because of its oppressive and often brutal treatment of the Rohingya, many of whom are confined to displacement camps following Buddhist-led rioting that has killed hundreds since 2012.
But the government, supported by nationalists, has denied Myanmar is to blame.
Protesters on Wednesday took to the streets of Yangon to condemn the UN for “bullying” Myanmar over the crisis. And at a regional meeting focused on the crisis Friday Myanmar delegates said that the country was being “singled out”.
Volker Turk, the assistant high commissioner for protection at the UN’s refugee agency, told Friday’s summit in Bangkok that “addressing the causes of migration will require full assumption of responsibility by Myanmar toward all its people.”
He added: “Granting citizenship is the ultimate goal. In the interim, there must be removal of restrictions on basic freedom.”
