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Rangoon. Burma has charged 128 fishermen from Indonesia and other countries with violating immigration laws after they were arrested last month for illegal fishing, a Burmese official said on Sunday.

The group, currently held in Rangoon’s notorious Insein jail, is made up mostly of Indonesians and includes 14 Filipinos, one Chinese and four Taiwanese nationals, a senior official at the prison said on condition of anonymity.

“Altogether, 128 foreign fishermen, most of them Indonesians, were charged at Insein prison on Friday. They were charged under the immigration act,” the official said.

He said seven Burmese fishermen arrested with the group also were charged, but it was not immediately clear what charges they faced.

The foreigners are likely to be deported from the military-ruled country, the official added, declining to give further details.

The fishermen were arrested last month from 10 illegal fishing vessels and sent to Insein jail for poaching in Burma’s waters — the country’s largest arrest for illegal fishing in decades, according to Burmese officials.

Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesman for Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Jakarta Globe that a consular team in Rangoon had visited the Indonesian fishermen, and would continue to assist them through the legal process.

“However, it is a little bit difficult to maintain constant communication with Myanmar,” he said, referring to Burma by its official name, which was changed by the military government.

A consular team from the Philippine Embassy in Rangoon has twice visited the detained Filipinos, the country’s foreign affairs department said on its Web site.

The Web site said the fishermen may face prosecution for violation of immigration laws, which carries a penalty of imprisonment for up to three months or the payment of fines not exceeding 200 kyat ($30).

Under the law of the sea, a nation has the right to outline an exclusive economic zone stretching up to 200 nautical miles from its shores and claim the right to exploit the resources within that area. Burma possesses a 2,229 kilometer-long coastline stretching along the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.



AFP, JG