Malaysia bids sombre farewell to nameless Rohingya dead

Malaysian authorities on Monday held a sombre funeral for 21 suspected ethnic Rohingya found in human-trafficking graves in May, with fellow Muslims praying for the unidentified victims to find a place in heaven.

The remains were what police said were the first of 106 exhumed so far from pits at trafficking camps found in late May in jungles in northern Malaysia along the Thai border, a discovery that laid bare the brutal extent of the region's migrant crisis.

About 100 local villagers offered quiet Muslim prayers as 21 wooden coffins -- containing 19 men and two women -- were lowered into deep graves cleared by earth-movers at an Islamic graveyard in the northern state of Kedah.

The discovery of camps and graves on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border and a flood of thousands of starving boat people to Southeast Asian shores in May has highlighted the plight of the Rohingya.
A Muslim minority from Myanmar, they have for years sought to escape what they say is worsening persecution by the country's Buddhist majority.

Fleeing abroad by the thousands each year, they typically put their lives in the hands of often brutal smugglers and traffickers who arrange a perilous passage by sea and land, usually destined for Muslim-majority Malaysia.