DHAKA: Myanmar's navy claimed that they have discovered more than 100 migrants men stranded for nearly a month on a southern island and rescued by Myanmar's Navy between June 30 and July 12.

Myanmar state media said on Tuesday.

Smugglers reportedly left the men on the island in the southernmost region of Tanintharyi in early June, reports news.vice.com.

A report by Myanmar state media outlet Global New Light claimed all the migrants on the island are Bengali, from neighboring Bangladesh.

"Some said they were forcibly taken from their country" the report says, "while others reported having been enticed by human traffickers to work in Malaysia."

Officials at the Bangladesh embassy in Yangon said the Myanmar government had not contacted them about the migrants.

"We have just received the news from the media," Tareque Mohammed, the deputy chief of mission, told the media. "We have received no confirmation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

In May, it was estimated that more than 60,000 people had taken to the open sea in Southeast Asia in pursuit of better lives, including Muslim Rohingya fleeing systematic persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis fleeing poverty.

The majority of Rohingya are rendered stateless under a 1982 law which denies their claim to Burmese — now Myanmar — citizenship.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, the Myanmar government and society "openly considers the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from what is now Bangladesh and not a distinct "national race" of Burma”.

Myanmar official statements refer to them as "Bengali", the "so-called Rohingya" or "kalar”, a racial slur.

Human Rights Watch also describes the attacks on Rohingya communities in the Arakan region, which began in 2012, as tantamount to "crimes against humanity carried out as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing”.

BDST: 1249 HRS, JULY 15, 2015
RS/RR/SMS