(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Myanmar's opposition party has spoken up in support of the country's Muslims who are fleeing human rights abuses and then leaving neighboring Bangladesh by boat, local media reported Tuesday.
Thousands of the Rohingya now remain stranded off the coasts of nearby countries that refused to accept them.
Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia last week began to block boats carrying Bangladeshi and Myanmar migrants from landing, drawing condemnation from the United Nations, which has warned of a "massive humanitarian disaster."
A spokesperson for Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy said Monday that if the migrants "are not accepted [as citizens], they cannot just be sent onto rivers. Can't be pushed out to sea."
"They are humans. I just see them as humans who are entitled to human rights," Nyan Win told reporters Monday on the sidelines of a meeting between political parties and President Thein Sein in Yangon.
The party's Nobel Prize-winning leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced widespread criticism for failing to defend the rights of the country's persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
Nyan Win's appeal on their behalf was a rare break from party protocol, though he was careful not to use the group's name, a gesture that has landed others in trouble with the government because it denies that the Rohingya are a real ethnic group.
Buddhist nationalists, supported by the government, claim that the Rohingya are in fact illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The government has also softened its stance amid growing international pressure about the migrant boat crisis.
"We understand there are concerns in the international community about the people at sea," Presidential spokesperson Ye Htut said.
"If they are from Myanmar and they have enough evidence to prove they are Myanmar we must be ready to bring back our people," he added.
But the Rohingya are fleeing dire conditions, and in any case the government does not recognise the majority as citizens.
Right groups have accused the government of deliberately driving the minority out of the country with a complex web of oppressive policies designed to make life unbearable for them.
Tens of thousands of the group are confined by guards and barbed wire barricades to squalid camps on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of western Rakhine state, after being forced to flee their homes during Buddhist-led riots.
Rohingya have been leaving the country on unsafe, rickety boats in record numbers since communal violence began in 2012. The UN estimates that 120,000 have fled in past three years.
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