Anti-migrant protests planned in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine

Yangon: 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.

After years of turning a blind eye to the exodus, Myanmar's navy in the last fortnight discovered two boats with more than 900 migrants who were brought to western Rakhine state. Myanmar insists the majority of the migrants are from Bangladesh and has vowed to send them across the border. It has also stuck to its line that Rohingya are not fleeing persecution. The country is yet to clearly state what will happen to migrants who are not deemed to be from Bangladeshi territory.

The rescue operations have stirred anger among Buddhist hardliners and citizens in Rakhine who want the central government to cease helping any migrants. Local groups met in the state capital Sittwe on Saturday and vowed to hold a protest next weekend. "The meeting decided to stage a protest on June 14 against keeping Bengalis from Bangladesh in Rakhine State," Soe Naing, a coordinator for social programmes in Rakhine who attended the meeting told AFP.

"We will contact other towns in Rakhine state as well to join in protests on that day," he added. Myanmar's government does not recognise the 1.3 million Rohingya living in Rakhine as citizens. Instead it classes them as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, even though many trace their origins back generations.