COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's
coastguard Sunday detained an Indian boat which had illegally entered the
island's territorial waters and rescued 30 Rohingya refugees including 16
children who were on board, an official said.
The dhow operated by
two Indians had entered Sri Lanka's northern waters after crossing the sea
border, said navy spokesman Chaminda Walakuluge.
"The coastguard
noticed that there were very small children on board and escorted the dhow to a
port and provided them with emergency assistance," Walakuluge told AFP.
He said seven men,
seven women and 16 children were on board, in addition to the two-man Indian
crew who had been detained pending investigations.
"There was a
15-day-old baby and a four-month-old child on board," Walakuluge said.
"We have taken them to port and provided food and medical attention."
He said it appeared
that the passengers had left India, where they had lived for about four years
as refugees. They were handed over to local authorities to decide further
action.
Investigators
suspect that the crews were trying to bring the Rohingya to Sri Lanka.
The Muslim Rohingya
in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine are denied citizenship and face brutal
discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country.
Thousands have
sought refuge in other countries in the region.
Four years ago Sri
Lanka's navy rescued 138 refugees from Bangladesh and Myanmar whose boat had
been drifting off Sri Lanka for over 10 days.
The United Nations
Human Rights Council last month agreed to send a fact-finding mission to
Myanmar to investigate claims that police and soldiers carried out a bloody
crackdown on the Rohingya in Rakhine.
More than 120,000
Rohingya have languished in grim displacement camps ever since bouts of
religious violence between Muslims and Buddhists ripped through the state in
2012.
Most are not allowed
to leave the squalid encampments, where they live in dilapidated shelters with
little access to food, education and health care. — AFP