"ON A Sunday night in late September, an old, wooden motorboat carrying 30 Rohingya Muslims disappeared quietly into the darkness from the shore near the Thae Chaung camp for internally displaced people, about 40 kilometres northwest of the Rakhine State capital, Sittwe. Relatives of those on board prayed and waved as the boat pulled away into the Bay of Bengal. They were left undisturbed by the camp’s security guards, who only patrol the land entrance to the camp of about 12,000 people. Among those who prayed for a safe passage was the mother of Ma Fatima, 16. (The names of all children mentioned in this article have been changed to protect their identities.) “There was no moon that night and I was unable to see my mother, but I know she would have remained on the dock for hours after the boat left,” recalled the teenager. Fatima was seasick for most of the four days before the boat beached near Nga Yoke Kaung in Ayeyarwady Region’s southwestern Ngapudaw Township, where those on board – 15 women, six men, eight teenagers and a boy aged six – were detained on the evening of September 26 while crammed into an SUV heading for the regional capital, Pathein. Fatima said the SUV that picked up the Rohingya after the boat came ashore was badly overcrowded. “Some complained about the situation and made a noise; I think that’s why we were arrested,” she said. They were taken to the police station at Ngapudaw town and charged under the 1949 Residents of Burma Registration Act because they had no proof of identity or citizenship..."