A court in Myanmar sentenced 109 Rohingya refugees to five years in prison at hard labor after they were caught at sea fleeing a camp in neighboring Bangladesh, Myanmar sources said.
Part of a larger group of 228 intercepted by the Myanmar navy on Nov. 29 while traveling to Malaysia, the jailed Rohingya were convicted of illegal immigration in a court in Maungdaw township in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
A separate group of 90 refugees was released with warnings by the court because they were under the age of 18, and 35 children under 10 were freed on the day their boat was captured, sources said.