Thirty-seven people, believed to be Rohingya Muslims, were on Monday found on the northern Malaysian beach, according to Myanmar police.
According to Reuters news reports, dozens of Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar have boarded small boats to try to reach Malaysia in recent months, which has been view as a decline in arrival after the 2015 military crackdown on trafficking.
Thirty-five Rohinyga were found last month in the northern state of Perlis on Sungai Belati beach.
On Monday, thirty-seven men were arrested around the Simpang Empat town after landing at the same spot in the early Monday, according to state-police chief Noor Mushar Mohamad told Reuters.
He said, “We believe they were travelling on a much larger boat, before being transferred into smaller boats at sea and taken to different places,” while adding that the men were in a good condition and have been immediately handed over to immigration officials.
In 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya bypassed into Bangladesh fleeing a military crackdown in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, the United Nations agencies reported.
“We are still investigating where the boats are coming from, but we suspect human trafficking syndicates are involved,” Noor Mushar said.
Myanmar considers Rohingya as the illegal migrants from the subcontinents of India and has also confined various sprawling camps in Rakhine.