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Thailand grants UN access to Rohingyas

UNHCR team visits 12 teenage migrants from Myanmar

AFP, Bangkok
The UN refugee agency said yesterday it had visited 12 teenage migrants from Myanmar after Thai authorities finally granted access to some of the Rohingya boat people washing up on its shores.
Thailand has recently been accused of cruelty toward the Muslim-majority group, including beating new arrivals and sending them back to sea with little food and water-reports thegovemmenthasdenied.
Kitty McKinsey, Asia spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said a team of four UN officials interviewed the boys aged between 14 to 17 on Thursday in the southern coastal province of Ranong.
"This was a fact-finding mission just to find out who these boys are, where they came from and what protection issues they have," she told AFP.
"They appeared in good condition... it is really a step forward that we have had this access," she added.
The visit came hours afterThai foreign minister Kasit Piromyasaid he had agreed "in principle" to allow the UNHCR to see some of the Rohingya.
Boatloads of the Rohingya wash up on Thai shores in rickety vessels each month trying to escape poverty and hardship back home.
A Thai court on Wednesday convicted 66 of 78 Rohingya who arrived on the western coast a day earlier to five days in
detention for illegal entry. The 12 teenagers were too young for trial.
McKinsey said that they were still working out the details for access to 66 adults, four of who remain in hospital after an arduous journey.
The UNHCR has for weeks been pressing the Thai government for access to the Rohingya, and on Thursday the UN body's representative in Thailand, Raymond Hall, met Kasit.
Hall said he hoped the government would carry out a transparent investigation into reports the Rohingya were mistreated here, and highlighted the plight of the Muslim ethnic group living in Myanmar. "It is a population that lives under very difficult circumstances... it is a population which I would say are stateless," Hall told reporters.
A Myanmar government official on Thursday denied that there were any Rohingya in Myanmar, despite reports that up to 700,000 of the minority live in its western regions near theborderwith Bangladesh.
"These so-called Rohingya are Bangladeshis who left their state for a better life, trying to get sympathy from Western countries by claiming to be Rohingya from Myanmar." the official who asked not to be named told AFP
Human rights watchdogs have said the group is largely shunned in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, with the military junta long denying them citizenship and committing religious persecution against them.
Kasit told reporters Thailand plans to bring up the Rohingya issue at a summit here late next month of regional grouping the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), of which Myanmar is also a member.
"AU levels will discuss how to solve this, as there is a human trafficking group sending Rohingya to work in Indonesia. Malaysia and Thailand," he said.
Accusations of mistreatment surfaced earlier this month after nearly 650 Rohingya were rescued off India and Indonesia, some claiming to have been beaten by Thai soldiers before being set adrift on the high seas to die.
Hundreds of the boat people are still believed to be missing at sea.