YANGON: Myanmar authorities have arrested around 150 Rohingya suspected of trying to flee to Malaysia, an official said on Friday.
The group of men, women and children was arrested in Thanbyuzayat township in southern Myanmar, the official said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The official did not specify why the group had been arrested, but the Muslim minority faces restrictions on traveling within Myanmar, where rights groups say they live in apartheid-like conditions.
“They were hiding nearby in hilly forest between two villages... We started arresting them since late last night after we got a tip-off,” the security source said.
According to initial reports, the group had traveled by boat from western Rakhine state and planned to travel on to Thailand and then Malaysia by road, the official said.
A number of non-Rohingya suspected of trafficking the group were also arrested, and police were looking for around 30 more people, according to the source.
A military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 sent hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing into neighboring Bangladesh with harrowing stories of murder, rape and arson.
Myanmar is facing genocide accusations at the United Nation’s top court following the mass exodus.
Widely viewed in Myanmar as interlopers from Bangladesh, Rohingya are denied citizenship — along with access to health care and education — and require permission to travel.
The arrests come days after the junta said it would begin welcoming back members of the minority living in Bangladesh as soon as next month in a pilot repatriation program.
The plan would see Myanmar “repatriate about 1,500 displaced persons,” state media on Friday quoted a senior border affairs official as saying.
The border official did not give a specific timetable and added Myanmar had “not received any response yet” to the plan.
The returning Rohingya would be placed in a “transit camp for a short period” before being resettled in 15 villages, the official said.
“For their safety and security, we have police stations near the 15 villages,” it added.
Thousands of Rohingya risk their lives each year making perilous journeys from camps in Bangladesh and Myanmar to reach Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia.
Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, who has dismissed the Rohingya identity as “imaginary,” was head of the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown.
Myanmar arrests about 150 Rohingya fleeing to Malaysia
https://arab.news/47uhc
Myanmar arrests about 150 Rohingya fleeing to Malaysia
- Group of men, women and children was arrested in Thanbyuzayat township in southern Myanmar
- Myanmar is facing genocide accusations at the United Nation’s top court following the mass exodus
Kremlin blasts potential EU deployment of French nuclear bombers
“The proliferation of nuclear weapons on the European continent is something that will not add security, predictability, or stability to the European continent,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The French president floated the idea during a TV appearance on Tuesday, comparing it to the United States’s nuclear umbrella policy that guarantees Washington would reciprocate if its allies come under nuclear attack.
“The Americans have the bombs on planes in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkiye,” Macron told TF1 television.
“We are ready to open this discussion. I will define the framework in a very specific way in the weeks and months to come.”
France is the EU’s only nuclear-armed nation.
Amid Russia’s offensive on Ukraine and US President Donald Trump’s calls on Europe to take more of the burden for its own defense, discussion is growing over extending Paris’s nuclear deterrent to the rest of the 27-member bloc.
Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power, possesses about 4,000 warheads and views France’s nuclear deterrence as a potential threat to its national security.
“At present, the entire system of strategic stability and security is in a deplorable state for obvious reasons,” Peskov added.
Amid his offensive on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has several times threatened nuclear escalation, drawing rebukes from the West over “reckless” rhetoric.
‘Albania belongs in EU,’ von der Leyen tells re-elected PM Rama
- EU and French leaders congratulated Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama Wednesday after his party’s electoral victory
BRUSSELS: EU and French leaders congratulated Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama Wednesday after his party’s electoral victory, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailing his “great progress toward our Union.”
“Let’s keep working closely together on EU reforms. Albania belongs in the EU!” von der Leyen said on X. French President Emmanuel Macron also hailed Rama’s win, writing on X: “France will always stand alongside Albania on its European path.”
Germany arrests three Ukrainians suspected of spying in exploding parcel plot
BERLIN: Germany has arrested three Ukrainian nationals on suspicion of foreign agent activity linked to the shipment of parcels containing explosive devices, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The suspects are believed to have been in contact with individuals working for Russian state institutions, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
France says to expel Algerian diplomats in tit-for-tat move
PARIS: France will expel Algerian diplomats in response to plans by Algiers to send more French officials home, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Wednesday, as relations between the countries deteriorate.
Barrot told the BFMTV broadcaster that he would summon Algeria’s charge d’affaires to inform him of the decision that he said was “perfectly proportionate at this point” to the Algerian move, which he called “unjustified and unjustifiable.”
Japanese military training plane crashes with two on board
TOKYO: A Japanese military training plane crashed shortly after takeoff, authorities said Wednesday, with reports saying two people were on board the aircraft which appeared to have fallen in a lake.
“We’re aware a T-4 plane that belongs to the Air Self-Defense Force fell down immediately after taking off at Komaki Air Base” in central Japan, top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said.
“Details are being probed by the defense ministry,” he told reporters.
The T-4 seats two and is a “domestically produced, highly reliable and maintainable training aircraft... used for all basic flight courses,” according to the defense ministry website.
The aircraft was flying around Lake Iruka near Inuyama city north of Nagoya, according to media outlets including public broadcaster NHK.
“There is no sight of the plane yet. We’ve been told that an aerial survey by an Aichi region helicopter found a spot where oil was floating on the surface of the lake,” local fire department official Hajjime Nakamura told AFP.
He said his office had received unconfirmed information that there were two people on board but that they had not been able to independently verify this.
Aerial footage of the lake broadcast by NHK showed an oil sheen on its surface, dotted with what appeared to be various pieces of debris.
Just after 3:00 p.m. (0600 GMT) the local fire department received a call saying it appeared that a plane had crashed into the lake, the reports said.
The reports added, citing defense ministry sources, that the training plane had disappeared from the radar.
The defense ministry was not able to immediately confirm details to AFP.
Jiji Press said the local municipality had said there had been no damage to houses in the area.
