Buddhist hardliners in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state are planning a day of protest against local authorities helping desperate boat migrants found adrift in the Bay of Bengal, organisers said on Sunday.
Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest states, is a tinderbox of communal tension between its Buddhist majority and a heavily persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, many of whom live in displacement camps after deadly unrest erupted there in 2012.
A regional migrant crisis is upending a fragile equilibrium that has since settled on the state. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in recent years, alongside Bangladeshi economic migrants, primarily headed for Malaysia and Indonesia.
The exodus largely went ignored until a crackdown on the people smuggling trade in Thailand last month caused a regional crisis as gangmasters abandoned their quarry on land and sea. Some 4,500 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants have since washed ashore in the region while the UN estimates around 2,000 others are still trapped at sea.
