Myanmar police said on Saturday they were preparing to charge journalists working for Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT, their local interpreter and driver for bringing a drone into the country without permission.
The police were also expecting to obtain court permission to remand the four for up to 15 days as they prepare to charge them under Section 8 of the Export and Import Law. Violators of it can be jailed for up to three years. The journalists — Lau Hon Meng from Singapore and Mok Choy Lin from Malaysia — plus their interpreter Aung Naing Soe and driver Hla Tin have been detained since Friday for flying a drone near the Parliament in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw.
The development comes amid tension between Turkey and Myanmar over the Rohingya crisis. In early September, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said that the death of the Rohingya constituted a “genocide” aimed at Muslim communities in the region, a charge Myanmar denies.
Turkish broadcaster TRT said on its website that the network “is in discussions with Myanmar authorities to secure their release. Both journalists had valid visas”.
Myanmar police spokesman Police Colonel Myo Thu Soe told Reuters the journalists “illegally imported the drone” and all four will be charged under the Export and Import Law.
UN housing report
Also, a Myanmar state-run newspaper on Saturday corrected a report that a UN settlement programme, UN-Habitat, had agreed to help build housing for people fleeing violence in the west of the country.
The development underscores tension between Myanmar and the United Nations, which in April criticised the government’s previous plan to resettle Rohingya Muslims displaced by last year’s violence in “camp-like” villages.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM) newspaper said it had “incorrectly stated that UN-Habitat had agreed with the Union government to provide technical assistance in building housings for displaced people in northern Rakhine”. “Union officials say that the issue is still under negotiation. The GNLM regrets the error,” said the newspaper.
Also, Myanmar’s government began harvesting rice from farmland abandoned by Rohingya in northern Rakhine on Saturday, officials said, a move likely to raise concerns about the prospect of return for more than half a million refugees who have fled communal violence in the area.
Sterilisation of Rohingya
Meanwhile, Bangladesh said it is planning to introduce voluntary sterilisation in its overcrowded Rohingya camps, where nearly a million refugees are fighting for space, after efforts to encourage birth control failed.
Pintu Kanti Bhattacharjee, who heads the family planning service in the district of Cox's Bazar where the camps are based, said there was little awareness of birth control among the Rohingya. Mr. Bhattacharjee said large families were the norm in the camps, where some parents had up to 19 children and many Rohingya men have more than one wife.
District family planning authorities have launched a drive to provide contraception, but say they have so far managed to distribute just 549 packets of condoms among the refugees, who are reluctant to use them.
