Indon detains 35 Burmese Muslim Rohingya heading to Australia Rohingya Muslims, trying to cross the Naf river into Bangladesh to escape sectarian violence in Burma, look on from an intercepted boat in Teknaf on June 13, 2012. INDONESIAN police have arrested 35 Muslim Rohingya from Burma planning to make the treacherous sea crossing to Australia to seek asylum. Officials said the arrests came the same day Rohingya being held at a detention centre on Sumatra island beat to death eight Buddhist detainees from Burma after being enraged by photos of recent communal violence in their homeland. Rohingya, described by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities, have fled Burma in their thousands since Buddhist-Muslim tensions exploded in their home state of Rakhine last year. "They planned to go to Australia," she said, adding that they would be sent to an immigration detention centre in the city. Friday's attack at the detention centre in Belawan underscored the soaring Muslim-Buddhist tensions that have cast a shadow over political reforms in Burma which have brought an end to decades of authoritarian military rule. An ethnic Rohingya refugee who was among two boatloads of asylum-seekers carrying 184 people from Burma rescued by Indonesian fishermen on February 26 and 28, 2013 off the waters of Sumatra island stands by the window of an immigration quarantine centre in Aceh.