A court in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region sentenced 21 Rohingya Muslims from northern Rakhine state to two years in jail for trying to travel to Yangon and beyond without approved travel documents under a controversial immigration law. Eight youths arrested with them were sent to a juvenile detention centre, RFA reported.
The 29, along with a four-year-old child, were detained on Sept. 26 as they headed to the commercial city Yangon to find jobs or to leave the country and look for work abroad, local officials said at the time.
They had travelled by boat from near the Rakhine capital Sittwe and were intercepted by police in the Ayeyarwady region’s Ngapudaw township, where a court handed down jail sentences under Myanmar’s 1949 Immigration Act.
