The Irrawaddy (
http://www.irrawaddy.org/news/#thi)
Thirty-Seven Killed At Sea
By Naw Seng
February 17, 2004—A boat accident near the Mergui Archipelago in southern Burma killed 37 passengers early yesterday morning. The boat was en route to a Salone, or sea gypsy, festival organized by Burma’s tourism authority.
The boat sank in an undisclosed location in the Andaman Sea near Lampi Island, about 400 miles southeast of Rangoon. It departed from Bokpyin, a mainland town in Tenasserim Division inhabited by Burmese.
U Shein, a Burmese villager from Bokpyin, told The Irrawaddy via mobile telephone that nine of the 46 people on board the sunken vessel were rescued. The rest are missing and assumed dead. He said the majority of the passengers were women and children.
The Salone Festival began on Feb 14 and closed today. It was held at Makyone Galet village on Bocho Island, near the accident site.
Mergui Archipelago is comprised of over 800 islands inhabited only by Salone, or sea gypsies. The residents live on boats during dry season and remain on land during rainy season. Salone practice centuries-old fishing and boat building techniques and live only along Burma’s Andaman coast.
Burma’s Hotels and Tourism Ministry and local tour companies, including Shambhala Tours Co, Ltd, organized the festival, which aimed to attract international tourists and operators of marine eco-tourism trips to the Mergui Archipelago. A staff member of Shambhala Tours said it brought 83 foreigners to the festival via Rangoon and Ranong, a Thai town near the Burma border.
Sea gypsies were rounded up and detained on designated islands by Burmese soldiers who forced them to perform for tourists, said U Shein. Burmese from elsewhere on the Andaman Coast, such as those killed in the boating accident, were told by authorities to attend the festival to bolster audience numbers, he added.
Over 250 Burmese and foreigners were aboard a Chindwin cruise liner, which visited the festival on Feb 14 as part of a tourism promotion by the Hotels and Tourism Ministry, according to the state-run newspaper The New Light of Myanmar.