Myanmar says persecution not the cause of migrant crisis

Myanmar said on June 4 that persecution of its Rohingya Muslim population was not the cause of Southeast Asia's migrant crisis, a day after the United States called on the country to give full rights to the minority to help end the exodus.

President Barack Obama said this week that Myanmar needed to end discrimination against the Rohingya if it was to succeed in its transition to a democracy, as Washington upped the pressure on the country to tackle what it sees as one of the root causes of a migration that the region has struggled to cope with. 

Myanmar does not recognise its 1.1 million Rohingya as citizens, rendering them effectively stateless. Almost 140,000 were displaced in deadly clashes with Buddhists in the country's western Rakhine state in 2012. 

It had been portrayed that discrimination and persecution were causing people to leave Rakhine State, Myanmar's Minister of Foreign Affairs Wunna Maung Lwin told diplomats and international agencies in Yangon, but that was "not true". 

He pointed to the number of Bangladeshis on board a migrant boat that landed in May as proof that the influx of "boat people" was a regional problem linked to human trafficking. 

"This incident... has shown to the region as well as the international community this is not the root cause," he said. 

The boat he referred to was intercepted by Myanmar's navy last month. Myanmar has said 200 of the 208 people aboard were economic migrants from Bangladesh. 

But a Reuters investigation found that 150-200 Rohingya had also been aboard that boat, but were spirited away by people smugglers in the week before the navy brought it to shore. 

Tareque Muhammad, deputy chief of mission at the Bangladesh embassy in Yangon, told...