Hong Kong -- Tens of thousands of people are fleeing violence in Myanmar only to be robbed, beaten and starved on boats helmed by human traffickers, according to a new report from the United Nations Refugee Agency.

In the 12 months to June, around 53,000 people left ports in the Myanmar-Bangladesh border area -- 61% more than the previous year -- many with the hope of reaching family in Malaysia, according to the report "Irregular Maritime Movements."

They paid between $50 and $300 to board boats carrying up to 700 passengers, some manned by armed guards, many of whom doled out verbal abuse or beatings to prevent their human cargo from moving around.

Some passengers were fed rice and noodles, while others received nothing at all on journeys lasting anywhere from seven days to two months, the report said.

More than 200 people are thought to have died making the trip so far this year, due to illness, heat, lack of food and water, and severe beatings.

However, the number of people who have perished at sea appears to have fallen over the past year, the report noted, after people smugglers hired bigger, more seaworthy vessels.

Persecution in Myanmar

That so many people, the vast majority Rohingya Muslims, are rushing to flee the country is a scathing indictment of the conditions they're being forced to endure in Myanmar, or Burma, as it's also known.

Of around 800,000 Rohingya Muslims living in Rakhine State, violence has pushed around 140,000 into temporary camps, while another 40,000 are effectively detained in isolated villages, according to Human Rights Watch.

"It's a humanitarian disaster," said HRW's Phil Robertson, who said conditions had worsened, especially since February, when the government barred international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) from working in Rakhine State.

The ban was lifted in late July but aid is yet to reach tens of thousands of people, many who are hungry and suffering preventable illnesses in crowded, unhygienic camps.

"What you're seeing is people who are leaving Rakhine State with very frail health to start with; people who have been in these camps and face the slow deprivation of food and basic medical services to the point that they're already weakened," Robertson said.

"They're getting on these boats, and these boats are landing in Thailand, and they're being put in jungle camps where they're on starvation rations unless their relatives can find exorbitant fees that the traffickers are demanding to release them and send them onto Malaysia."

The U.N. report said upon arrival in Thailand, new arrivals said they were driven through the night in pickups with 15 to 20 other people who were forced to sit or lie on top of one another.

They were then taken to camps where hundreds of people, including women and children, were held while smugglers phoned family members abroad, demanding more money for their loved ones' safe passage to Malaysia.

Demands "were accompanied by threats or, when payment was not immediate, severe beating and prolonged detention in a smugglers' camp for up to six months," the report said.

Malnourished in Malaysia

As many as 38,000 people had registered as Rohingya in Malaysia, the report said, noting that since 2013, many had arrived with serious medical conditions.

In the first half of this year, more than 140 people had been diagnosed with beriberi, a condition caused by severe malnutrition and vitamin B deficiency, which can cause paralysis and death. That's 12 times the number diagnosed in the previous 14 months.

"They have faced deprivation, abuse and suffering every step of their way as they try to flee the predations of the Burmese government, and the local state government and the Rakhine state government," Robertson said.

Myanmar doesn't recognize the Rohingya as citizens or as one of the predominantly Buddhist country's ethnic minorities.

"I think the international community really has to push very hard on the Burmese government to accept the reality that these people should be considered citizens of Burma.

"For the government of Burma to maintain this fiction that somehow these are recently arrived migrants from India or from Bangladesh is absolutely unconscionable," Robertson added.

In a statement following their five-day visit to Myanmar last week, two commissioners from the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom said they were "deeply troubled by reports we received of abuses against the Rohingya Muslim community in Rakhine State."

"No impartial observers question reports of systematic, large-scale and egregious abuses of human rights of this community involving acts and omissions resulting in deaths, injuries, displacement, denial of basic health and other services, denial of freedom of movement, and denial of the right to a nationality, among other violations," said Commissioners M. Zudhi Jasser and Eric P. Schwartz.

In the past few years, Myanmar's new leadership under President Thein Sein has won praise for its efforts to open the once reclusive country to foreign influences and trade. However its treatment of the Rohingya continues to cloud its stated commitment to improving human rights.

Having endured nearly 15 years of house arrest with grace and courage, Aung San Suu Kyi has earned a reputation throughout the world as a political superstar of rare moral stature.

But for some, mostly from outside the country but also from within, the aura surrounding Myanmar's most famous daughter has dimmed in recent years.

"I think everyone agrees now she has been a disappointment when it comes to human rights promotion," said David Mathieson, Human Rights Watch's senior researcher on Myanmar.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner's glittering international reputation means that visiting dignitaries still clamor for a meeting since she emerged from detention in 2010 and set about pressing her case to become the next president of post-reform Myanmar. "Everyone that arrives in Rangoon (Yangon) expects to get a photo op," said Mathieson. "They all want that Suu Kyi photo on the mantelpiece."

But for some observers of Myanmar's emergence from nearly half a century of authoritarian military rule, the 68-year-old's perceived failure to speak out against rising violence towards the mainly Buddhist country's Muslim Rohingya minority is grounds for criticism.

HRW executive director Kenneth Roth was withering in a recent report: "The world was apparently mistaken to assume that as a revered victim of rights abuse she would also be a principled defender of rights."

Aung Zaw, editor of Myanmar news magazine The Irrawaddy, said that while she remained popular among Burmese, Suu Kyi had eroded some of her domestic support in recent years.

Her failure to speak out on ethnic issues and the communal violence that had wracked the country was "shocking," he said, and had been met with disappointment in quarters of the country's ethnic communities.

"People expected her -- as she is a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- to say a few words to stop the bloodshed," he said.

Ethnic conflict has been a recurring feature of Myanmar's political landscape since it gained independence from Britain in 1948.

But following the 2011 transition from military rule to quasi-civilian governance, the country has witnessed a significant spike in violence targeting Muslims, with Buddhist extremists blamed for fanning the flames of hatred.

The Rohingya -- a Muslim minority concentrated in impoverished Rakhine state in the west of the country -- has borne the worst of it, prompting the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, to declare this month that the recent persecution of the group "could amount to crimes against humanity." Myanmar presidential spokesman Ye Htut told CNN the government rejected the remarks.

Myanmar's most persecuted minority

The Rohingya -- regarded by many in Myanmar as interlopers from neighboring Bangladesh -- are de jure stateless due to their lack of official recognition as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups. During the controversial recent national census, the country's first in 31 years, officials forbade respondents from identifying as Rohingya, drawing international criticism.

The Rohingya face "very, very strong" antipathy throughout the country, according to Georgetown University expert David Steinberg, being subjected to restrictions on marriage, employment, health care, education and movement, and are the only group in the country barred from having more than two children.

In 2012, outbreaks of communal violence in Rakhine -- home to an estimated 800,000 Rohingya -- left hundreds dead, the majority of them Muslims. The bloodshed displaced huge populations from their homes into squalid camps, where 140,000, mostly Rohingya, remain, completely reliant on humanitarian aid supplies that are increasingly being restricted.

Last month, Doctors Without Borders -- the largest NGO healthcare provider in Rakhine -- was banned from operating in the state, where it had worked for more than 20 years, because officials accused it of providing preferential treatment to Rohingya. Weeks later, international aid workers were driven from the state during rioting by Buddhist-led mobs angry at the aid workers' perceived support for the Rohingya, a development Quintana warned would have severe consequences for the 140,000 within the camps, and 700,000 vulnerable people outside them.

The killings have persisted as well, according to reports. The U.N. says that in January, at least 40 Rohingya men, women and children were killed by security forces and civilians from the Rakhine ethnic group at a village in Rakhine state called Du Chee Yar Tan. An official inquiry by Myanmar's government found no evidence to support the claims of a massacre, said Htut.

While Suu Kyi -- who, through her staff, declined to comment for this story -- has joined rights activists in criticizing the two-child limit for Rohingya as discriminatory, her critics say she has been less than emphatic about the communal violence that has disproportionately affected the Rohingya.

When drawn on the Rohingya issue, "The Lady," as she is known in Myanmar, has consistently hewn to familiar talking points: stressing the rule of law and a commitment to non-violence, while refusing to condemn either side -- a position that many rights activists find untenable.

She has rejected the HRW's characterization of the situation as "ethnic cleansing," and told an Indian television interviewer in 2012 not to "forget that violence has been committed by both sides." "This is why I prefer not to take sides and also I want to work towards reconciliation between these two communities. I'm not going to be able to do that if I'm going to take sides."

In November, she told an audience in Sydney that "what people want is not defense but condemnation. I am not condemning because I have not found that condemnation brings good results."

Suu Kyi's stance, said Chris Lewa, director of Rohingya advocacy group The Arakan Project, was "very disappointing," in that it falsely equated the suffering of Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine. "Silence is not remaining neutral. It's giving a green light to those who want violence, keeping this climate of impunity and insecurity."

A 'politically calculated silence'?

So why has this outspoken defender of human rights seemingly lost her voice?

It is, says Mathieson, "a politically calculated silence" that reflects the re-entry of Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy into the political fold in earnest.

The former political prisoner, who described herself to CNN last year as having "been a politician all along," has repeatedly said she wants to be the next president of Myanmar. The 2015 general election will see her compete against the military-backed party of President Thein Sein on one flank, and hardline anti-regime activists on the other.

"She's playing a different game now," said Mathieson. "People still see her as this great Nobel Peace Prize-winning icon for human rights and democracy -- what they don't get now is she wants to be a politician taking on one of the most brutal militaries in the world."

Mathieson said Suu Kyi's political fortunes depended on negotiating several challenges, including trying to strike a balance between international expectations -- "most of which are outlandishly unfair and ill-informed" -- and a "very complicated domestic setting where if she suddenly did do a volte-face and spoke out on behalf of Muslims, it would be politically disastrous."

Moreover, she was operating in a complicated post-authoritarian domestic environment in which she had opted to work inside the system as a lawmaker and was compelled to keep senior military figures, who still hold a strong grip on the reins of power, onside. "I can understand why she's walking on eggshells," he said.

Suu Kyi's political ambitions were complicated by the fact that a clause in Myanmar's 2008 military-drafted constitution prohibits anyone with a foreign spouse or children from becoming president, said Mathieson. Suu Kyi's late husband was a foreign-born Oxford academic, and her two adult sons are British.

While Suu Kyi and her supporters are seeking to have this clause removed from the constitution before 2015, the time frame to achieve this is short, and parliament has indicated any changes to the constitution would prioritize other reforms first.

For some in Myanmar, it is her perceived failure to successfully negotiate her new relationship with the military that is the biggest source of disappointment. To Zaw, her accommodations to the military establishment have led to her, and others in the opposition, being co-opted by a "completely flawed system."

"Her reading of the government, an offshoot of the repressive regime, has been wrong," said Zaw, citing her controversial support for a Chinese-backed copper mine in Letpadeung, which saw her sharply criticized by local residents opposed to the project, as one such misstep to have alienated supporters.

"The regime is clever at using her political legitimacy to advance its goal to legitimize its rule, and to change the perceptions of Western governments towards the country -- from pariah to darling of the West.

While she retained popularity among many Burmese, he said, the result was that Suu Kyi had lost some of her allies "inside and outside of Burma."

'Not so simple'

But others are more forgiving of her position. Influential blogger and activist Nay Phone Latt, who was a political prisoner for four years under the junta and is currently campaigning against a wave of "hate speech" in Myanmar, stressed that Suu Kyi was negotiating a complex political environment at a critical juncture for the country.

"The political situation (in) our country is not so simple," he said. "I don't want to blame her."

Steinberg said he interpreted Suu Kyi's politically expedient stance on the Rohingya issue as motivated out of concern for Myanmar's national interest, rather than being a purely self-interested act.

"I think she thinks she's the person in that country who best understands what democracy is about, and what's best for the future of Burma."

He believed that Suu Kyi remained "very important" to Myanmar's future, but that her significance would diminish over time, if the government's rapid reforms of recent years continued apace and brought about significant change.

"If the government can deliver improvement in the lives of the people, if they do things with the environment and pay attention to minorities, then her status will quietly diminish," he said. Suu Kyi would likely retain a high profile to the rest of the world regardless, he predicted, "because we like Joans of Arc."

For Zaw, despite his criticisms, Suu Kyi remained "one of the hopes in Burma," alongside "many other democrats and ethnic leaders who continue to push for genuine change."

She retained the support of many, he said, and crucially, she was not corrupt.

"I still think there's time for her to change her tactics, reconnect to the roots and rebuild her base," he said. "If she can mobilize people and her allies, inside and outside, the other side will negotiate and make more meaningful concessions.

"She is someone Burma was expecting for many decades. She should know that the country needs her."

Myanmar’s transition has been remarkable, but it has also been tarnished by violence against its Muslim community. Indeed, these deadly attacks pose a threat to Myanmar’s nascent democracy, as well as its image regionally and internationally.

Visiting Rakhine state, where violence took place this past week, President Thein Sein said: “It is important not to have more riots while we are working very hard to recover the losses we had because of previous incidents. The Rakhine state government needs to cooperate with the people to avoid more conflict by learning from the lessons of previous riots.”

More needs to be done. Improving police capacity with better training and equipment is one important element, and outside expertise and assistance can accelerate the necessary changes.

But the answer to resolving this difficult issue can also be found in each and every town in Myanmar. The country’s Muslim community is diverse and found in all cities, most towns and many villages. In addition, Myanmar’s Muslims have long been intimately entwined with the country’s commercial life, and there is a high and lingering financial cost to violence when part of the commercial district of a town is destroyed. For example, attacks on the Muslim community left Meiktila's markets depleted, kept visitors away and cut access to the informal financial system.

Rising Burman-Buddhist nationalism and the growing influence of the monk-led “969” movement, which preaches intolerance and urges a boycott of Muslim businesses, is a dangerous combination of populism wrapped in religious respectability. The considerable frustration and anger built up during the country’s years of authoritarian rule need to be directed away from a negative campaign focused on one of the country’s minorities and channeled toward a more positive vision of a democratic, tolerant, and prosperous country. Politicians for their part need to give more hope to constituents and prey less on their fears at what is an uncertain time.

Myanmar also needs to delegitimize hate speech masquerading as economic nationalism. Such language is anti-democratic, will encourage violence, cause instability and undermine much needed economic development. A society that is open, multi-ethnic and multi-religious will be one that makes the most of its limited human resources rather than encouraging the flight of people with much needed skills, languages, capital and entrepreneurial flair.

More than any other issue, the treatment of Myanmar’s Muslim population is being watched closely in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world as the country will soon host the Southeast Asian Games and then chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The global spotlight will therefore be focused not just on Myanmar’s athletes, officials, and diplomats but on the still evolving system of government and emerging political culture. The treatment of minorities is the yardstick by which the country’s democracy will be measured, and the welcome openness since the creation of the civilian-led government in March 2011 is now exposing Myanmar to new levels of international scrutiny, as well as greater expectations in terms of adhering to international norms and standards for democracy, policing, human rights and rule of law.

The inter-religious violence that started in northern Rakhine State in June last year spread – as many around the world had feared it might – because the authorities did not act firmly and transparently against the perpetrators. Local security officials were unable to restrain a community angered over not only a dispute at a neighborhood shop, but also the brutal killing of a monk. A lack of trust in law enforcement prompted citizens to undertake their own retribution, with fatal and potentially long lasting consequences.

The fact is that authorities were unprepared and failed to uphold criminal law, protect all citizens and stop perpetrators of violence regardless of their ethnicity or religion, and rather than use legal force to restrain such lawlessness, they used almost no force and exercised little authority, with deadly results.

The police failed at many levels, but fixing this inadequate response starts at the top. The president announced a “zero tolerance” approach to what he called “senseless, irrational behavior.” This needs to be followed up with clear orders down the hierarchy that prioritize the protection of all people in Myanmar without the excessive use of deadly force.

In some recent incidents in Mandalay and Sagaing, the message seems to have been received. Response time by authorities, including the police, has apparently improved. Intercommunal conflicts triggered by similar assaults, accidents or trading disputes have been more quickly addressed and without the massive destruction and death toll seen in elsewhere.

Myanmar's leaders need to be clear and the police firm without being repressive, while the country’s political figures and religious leaders must think carefully about what they say. If Myanmar gets this wrong, then everybody will lose out because a violent, unstable, and bigoted country is a place that no one wants to visit or invest in.

But if Myanmar can get these changes right, then it will reap the rewards – not just in terms of medals, accolades, tourists, and investment, but by achieving peace and stability within its borders.

If it were not for the powerful stench and desperate shouts emanating from the wire cages, the men sitting in rows, each wearing a white skull cap, look like they could be at a prayer meeting.

But for the 276 Rohingya men sitting on the floor of two cells designed to hold just 15 people each, their situation is about as far away from a mosque as it gets -- that was the scene, vividly described and shown in an a report by British news network and CNN affiliate, Channel 4.

Appearing to have barely enough room to sit, some of the men reportedly had swollen feet and withered leg muscles from a lack of exercise and had not moved from the cage in five months.

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW), the men are among 1,700 ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- who are being held in appalling conditions in Thai immigration detention centers in Thailand's Phang Nga province and filmed secretly by the news team from Channel 4.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar's Arakan State have already fled persecution amid ongoing sectarian violence between the majority Buddhist Arakanese and the Muslim Rohingya.

Many flee in small, unseaworthy boats arriving in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Some never make it to their destinations. Last month, a boat carrying about 100 Rohingya capsized off western Myanmar and at least 50 were feared drowned.

HRW says the overcrowded conditions are part of an unsanctioned policy of deterring Rohingya from seeking asylum in Thailand.

"I think that the Thai policy is all about saying to the Rohingya, 'Hey, if you land in Thailand you're not going to have an easy time of it'," Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of HRW, told CNN.

"By putting people in detention centers in these appalling conditions the Thai government is effectively saying come here at your own peril."

HRW says Thai immigration officials have not permitted UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, to conduct refugee status determination screenings and have split up the Rohingya families with women and children sent to government-run shelters.

According to the Channel 4 report, while the women and children are held in better conditions than the men, they often have no information about the status or even whereabouts of their partners.

"The government should immediately allow them to pursue their asylum claims with the UN refugee agency," said HRW Asia director Brad Adams, adding that under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution.

HRW also claimed that under Thailand's "help on" policy -- whereby Thai Navy vessels that intercept Rohingya boats supply them with fuel and provisions on condition the boats sail onward to Malaysia and Indonesia -- Rohingya were being put at further risk.

"Thai authorities should provide temporary protection to Rohingya and scrap the 'help on' policy that places these asylum seekers in harm's way," Adams said. "The government should help Rohingya who escape from oppression and hardship in Burma -- not worsen their plight."

But Manasvi Srisodapol, spokesman for the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told CNN that Thai authorities were fully aware of and concerned about overcrowding at its existing immigration facilities.

"Since January, various groups of Rohingyas have been placed under the care of various immigration and detention centers and government shelters across Thailand, that notwithstanding, alternative arrangements are being identified as a matter of priority to address the issue of overcrowding, as well as in reuniting those Rohingyas with their family members."

He denied the government was not cooperating with international bodies over the issue, saying the government was working in close partnership with humanitarian agencies such as the UNHCR, UNICEF and the ICRC to provide temporary assistance to the refugees. He added that their asylum rights would be fully respected.

"Thailand has not been denying anyone, their basic human rights, he said. "In fact Thailand is providing temporary assistance and shelters in spite the fact that these Rohingyas are illegal migrants. Furthermore, international organizations such as UNHCR, ICRC, IOM and UNICEF have access to these people on the regular basis."

Thailand's Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra agreed in January to permit Rohingya arriving by boat in Thailand to stay temporarily, initially for six months, until they could be safely repatriated or resettled in a third country.

"The Thai government is in close cooperation with various countries and international organizations to find a durable solution for the Rohingyas," said Srisodapol.

"The six-month period announced in January is a tentative time frame and we are examining various possibilities."

Critics fear that if the Thai government is unable to find a third country that would accept the asylum seekers, then Thailand may deport the Rohingya back to Myanmar where they would undoubtedly face persecution.

CNN's Kocha Olarn in Bangkok contributed to this report.