YANGON: Myanmar police arrested nearly 100 ethnic Rohingya on Wednesday after raiding a house in the commercial capital of Yangon, police and local media said.
Photos published by the local Tomorrow News Journal showed several barefoot men and dozens of women in colourful head scarves sitting on the ground in a courtyard.
Myanmar frequently detains Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority, on grounds of “illegal travel” for attempting to leave their native western Rakhine state.
Tin Maung Lwin, a police captain from Shwe Pyi Thar township, where the group was found, confirmed the arrests but declined to give further details.
“The investigation is still ongoing,” he said, adding that either 98 or 99 people had been arrested. He said they would be sent to a quarantine centre to prevent the spread of COVID-19
Some 600,000 Rohingya live in Myanmar under what Amnesty International has called “apartheid conditions”, mostly confined to camps and villages and unable to travel…