The United Nations on Wednesday condemned Myanmar's jailing of a writer for urging religious tolerance, calling on authorities to release him and instead prosecute extremists inciting violence against minorities.

Htin Lin Oo, a columnist and former information officer for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was arrested in December over a speech in which he urged Myanmar's hardline Buddhists to show tolerance to minorities in the country.

More than 700 migrants found adrift on a fishing boat six days ago disembarked in western Myanmar's Rakhine state Wednesday, officials said, as the U.S. warned it was monitoring their fate "very closely".

Before they were intercepted the migrants had been heading south towards Malaysia, which along with Indonesia and Thailand has seen 3,500 hungry people arrive in recent weeks in a migrant crisis that has unfurled since a crackdown on people-smuggling.

President Barack Obama has urged Myanmar to end discrimination against its ethnic Rohingya minority if it wants to succeed in its democratic transition from decades of junta rule.

The plight of the Muslim group, 1.3 million of whom live in western Myanmar but are mostly denied citizenship, has come under scrutiny as a migrant crisis unfurls in Southeast Asia.

Muslim Rohingya women who were held at human-trafficking camps in Thailand and Malaysia were subjected to gang rapes by their captors, assaults that left at least two of them pregnant, a Malaysian media report said.

Malaysia's state-run Bernama news agency quoted a Rohingya survivor of the camps, Nur Khaidha Abdul Shukur, as saying young women would be taken away nightly from the jungle post where she was held near Padang Besar in Thailand.

The Chinese military will hold a live-fire exercise near its border with Myanmar, state media reported Monday, as effects from an ethnic insurgency raging in the southeast Asian country spill over into China.

The official Xinhua news agency, citing unidentified military sources, said the drill would begin on Tuesday in Yunnan province, but provided no other details, such as what kind of weapons would be used.

A Thai national who allegedly owned a boat that was recently discovered by the Myanmar navy crammed with more than 200 migrants has been arrested, state media said Saturday.

The 53-year-old man was detained in the country's biggest city Yangon, the Global New Light of Myanmar reported, adding that his capture was made after authorities exchanged "information with Thai police".

Myanmar's navy found 727 people crammed on a fishing boat in its waters, the Ministry of Information said in a Facebook post Friday, adding the would-be "Bengali" migrants had been towed to an island. 

"Altogether 727 people -- 608 Bengali men, 74 women and 45 children -- in a fishing boat have been arrested as a Myanmar Navy ship found them this morning in the delta," the statement said.

Myanmar's delegate to talks in Bangkok on Southeast Asia's migrant crisis on Friday rebuked the U.N.'s refugee agency for calling on the country to recognize the Muslim Rohingya minority as citizens to stem their exodus from its shores.

On "this issue of illegal migration of boat people, you cannot single out my country," Myanmar delegate Foreign Ministry Director-General Htin Lynn said in stern response to a UNHCR plea to address the root causes of the ongoing migration crisis including the statelessness issue.

Aung San Suu Kyi was once an unassailable champion of Myanmar's powerless. But the opposition leader's refusal to speak up for a persecuted Muslim minority at the heart of a migrant crisis has cast doubt over her moral force -- and even earned a gentle rebuke from fellow Nobel laureate the Dalai Lama.

Images of hungry migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh hauled from vessels to Southeast Asian shores after months at sea have spurred calls for immediate humanitarian action to be matched by moves to address the root causes of the crisis.

Gas-rich Qatar pledged $50 million on Thursday to help Indonesia shelter Muslim Rohingya migrants from Myanmar, the official QNA news agency reported.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have all prevented vessels overloaded with starving migrants from Bangladesh and from Myanmar's ethnic Rohingya minority from landing on their shores.