Rohingya exodus not solely our problem: Myanmar
It says it may not attend meeting called by Thailand to tackle issue
By Nirmal Ghosh, Indochina Bureau Chief In Bangkok, The Straits Times, 16 May 2015
MYANMAR said it cannot be held solely responsible for the mass exodus of mainly Rohingya boat people and may not attend the May 29 meeting Thailand has called to tackle the humanitarian crisis.
"We do not accept it if they (Thailand) are inviting us just to ease the pressure they are facing," presidential office director Zaw Htay was quoted as saying.
Early this month, the Thai authorities found the remains of several dozen people believed to be migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh buried in the jungles bordering Malaysia.
"The root cause (of the crisis) is increasing human trafficking. The problem of the migrant graves is not a Myanmar problem," he added
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said yesterday that Thailand cannot force Myanmar to attend the meeting of senior officials from 17 countries in the region. "Whoever wants to come can come. However, for those who don't, no one can force them. Every country has equal dignity," he was quoted by The Nation newspaper as saying.
Calls have been mounting for Myanmar to acknowledge responsibility, and for countries in the region to allow the boat people to land, to prevent more deaths.
On Thursday, Rohingya on a boat off Thailand said as many as 10 on the squalid overcrowded vessel holding more than 300 people had died and their bodies had been jettisoned overboard, after the crew abandoned the boat fearing Thailand's ongoing crackdown on smuggling gangs. Many more in other boats are feared to have died from starvation and sickness.
The boat people, mostly Rohingya, are from Myanmar's Rakhine state and Teknaf in neighbouring Bangladesh, both of them poverty-stricken areas.
Yesterday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon expressed alarm that some countries were turning these people away.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said he was concerned about the plight of the migrants, calling it "an issue of international and regional importance".
"We are in contact with all relevant parties, with whom we share the desire to find a solution to this crisis," he said in a statement.
Activists tracking the migration believe there may be upwards of 8,000 boat people still at sea. Malaysia this week dropped its normally accommodating attitude and said it would push back migrant ships. Indonesia has also said it will not allow the migrants to land. Thailand said it will treat them as illegal immigrants and give them only temporary shelter.
In a Facebook post, Mr Zaw Htay said that "Malaysia and Thailand should enforce the law, and investigate and arrest people who killed the victims or who are trafficking these Bengali. Instead... they point to our country."
Myanmar regards the Rohingya as historically recent illegal immigrants from Bangladesh even though many have been in Rakhine state for generations.
Yangon-based analyst Richard Horsey told The Straits Times it is "an intractable problem".
"It is clear that the solution to this problem lies in the countries of origin - Myanmar and Bangladesh. But this does not allow the destination countries to absolve themselves of the moral responsibility to act now to save lives at sea," he said.
Said Malaysia's former foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar, who is Organisation of Islamic Cooperation special envoy to Myanmar: "It's not about pointing fingers, it's about acknowledging the problem. There is no way we can keep sweeping this under the carpet. Denying it is not the answer."
Refugee issue: KL urges end to Myanmar 'oppression'
Malaysia turns away migrant boats as UN warns of humanitarian crisis
By Shannon Teoh, Malaysia Correspondent, In Kuala Lumpur, The Straits Times, 15 May 2015
MALAYSIA has turned away two boats with up to 800 Rohingya Muslims, insisting that Myanmar must end its oppression of this minority group.
With 1,158 refugees, mainly Rohingyas from Myanmar but some from Bangladesh as well, landing in Langkawi on Sunday and an estimated 6,000 more still drifting at sea, Malaysia insisted yesterday that the illegal migrants must be sent back home, as it stepped up patrols on its north-western coast.
"We need to send a very strong message to Myanmar that they need to treat their people with humanity. They... cannot be so oppressive," Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He also told Reuters that Myanmar "is not at war", so "if there is nothing wrong with the ship, they should sail back to their own country".
The Rohingyas - many of whom are stateless - have been fleeing civil strife in the Rakhine region of Myanmar in the wake of conflicts with the Buddhist majority. Malaysia's stance has been criticised by human rights groups and the United Nations, which has warned that the situation could develop into a massive humanitarian crisis.
The UN refugee agency in Malaysia told The Straits Times the 1,158 asylum seekers have been moved to detention centres in Kedah. They hope to join more than 150,000 predominantly Myanmar refugees already registered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. These include more than 45,000 Rohingyas, one of the largest groups outside their home country.
These refugees have no access to legal work but often work informally in sectors such as construction and plantations and are vulnerable to exploitation because of their uncertain legal status.
The sudden deluge of refugees trying to enter Malaysia from Myanmar and Bangladesh comes on the back of a crackdown on human trafficking camps along the border with Thailand. The smugglers are believed to have abandoned the ships bearing the migrants - some of whom have already perished at sea as Malaysian, Thai and Indonesian authorities refuse to welcome them.
Malaysia's coast guard has also raised its watch and included air patrols to prevent "any illegal intrusion", First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee told AFP. "We have doubled up our assets and manpower."
Villager Mohd Ridzuan Musa, 20, said one of the immigrants who landed on Sunday night told him that they had no choice but to jump into chest-deep water and wade to the shores of Langkawi if they did not want to be shot dead.
"The vessel captain asked them to jump, saying that he had a gun and would shoot them. A small boat then came to pick the captain up and it sped off," The Star quoted him as saying.
A local Rohingya rights group has called on Asean - which Malaysia chairs this year - to meet and find a solution or "two million Rohingyas will become boat people".
"Their lives are in danger. We ask Malaysia to actually find the boats in the ocean and save these human beings," Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation Malaysia president Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani told The Straits Times.
"Asean must protect Asean people and allow us to live in Asean."
Tales of killings and people thrown overboard emerge
The Straits Times, 16 May 2015
LANGSA (Indonesia) - Harrowing tales emerged yesterday of people killing and throwing one another overboard after more than 700 migrants aboard two vessels were rescued and taken ashore in Aceh, in northern Sumatra.
Turned away from Malaysian waters and carrying 712 people, including 61 children, one vessel was sinking when it was sighted by Indonesian fishermen, who took survivors ashore, according to local reports. Forty-seven others from another vessel were rescued after they leapt into the water pleading for help.
The migrants, identified by police as Bangladeshis and Rohingya from Myanmar, had been at sea for two months.
Pictures showed the migrants, who were taken to a warehouse in Langsa after being taken ashore early yesterday by six fishing boats, looking exhausted, with many wearing just shorts and sarongs.
"They were killing each other, throwing people overboard," Mr Sunarya, the police chief in Langsa, told Agence France-Presse.
"Because (there) was overcapacity (on the boat), some people had to go and probably they were defending themselves," he added.
Mr Khairul Nova, a search- and-rescue agency official in Langsa, said the migrants began jumping from the listing boat when they saw the fishermen approaching, desperate to be rescued.
"Their condition is generally bad, some of them have died at sea," he said, without giving further details. "They were starving at sea, they fought among themselves."
He said that some had sustained injuries to their heads, arms and legs and had been taken to hospital. The boat was about 50km off the coast when it was spotted, Mr Sunarya said.
He said the group had entered Malaysian waters, the preferred destination of many migrants in the region, in several boats but were then caught by the Malaysian Navy, which herded them into one boat and pushed them towards Indonesian waters.
Despite the Indonesian authorities' previous pledge to turn back boats, Mr Sunarya said several government agencies were now involved in helping the rescued migrants.
"It is for humanitarian reasons. Whoever they are, we should help because the boat was sinking and there were children swimming (around it)," he added.
The new arrivals brought the total number of migrants sheltered in Aceh to more than 1,300.
Separately, the Thai Navy said it found a group of 106 people, mostly men but including 15 women and two children, on a small island off the coast of Phang Nga province.
"It's not clear how they ended up on the island," Phang Nga provincial governor Prayoon Rattanasenee was quoted as saying in The Bangkok Post. The group said they were Rohingya migrants from Myanmar. "We are in the process of identifying if they were victims of human trafficking."
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Thailand may set up camps for Rohingya migrants
It is looking at using 2 unpopulated islands as temporary detention sites
By Nirmal Ghosh, Indochina Bureau Chief In Bangkok, The Straits Times, 15 May 2015
THAILAND may set up temporary camps for boat people, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha told journalists yesterday, even as a decrepit boat with some 300 desperate Rohingya aboard was found drifting off Koh Lipe island, west of Satun province.
The rust-encrusted boat, located by the Thai Navy from information from fishing boats and occasional mobile phone calls from the people on board, had been abandoned by the crew, who had left it with a disabled engine about a week ago. It bore a banner with the English words "We are Myanmar Rohingya" painted on it.
With food and water running out, 10 people aboard the vessel had died and their bodies had been thrown overboard, the Rohingya people on board said. Some had resorted to drinking their own urine. Thai fishermen were giving them some food, reporters at the scene said.
Agence France-Presse news agency reported one of the Rohingya telling journalists: "We have been at sea for two months. We want to go to Malaysia but we have not reached there yet."
The boat was packed with the Rohingya, many of them women and children, and looking visibly weak. Some cried and pleaded for food and water as reporters approached in a speedboat.
Late yesterday, a Thai Navy helicopter dropped food. Mr Jeff Labovitz, chief of mission in Thailand of the International Organisation for Migration, said the navy was willing to take the Rohingya off the boat but they had thus far refused, saying they wanted to go to Malaysia.
The Prime Minister has ordered an evaluation of two unpopulated islands off the west coast province of Ranong, which may be used to temporarily detain Rohingya migrants, reported The Nation daily, quoting sources.
In Bangkok, Premier Prayut told journalists that the migrants would be only temporarily detained. Thailand's policy was to ensure that illegal migrants were safely repatriated, he said.
Thailand was already holding some 100,000 Rohingya migrants, said the Premier who, with Thailand under pressure from the international community, has made tackling human trafficking a priority. But he insisted that other countries needed to help. "Everyone tries to make a transit point such as us take responsibility. Is this fair?" he said.
Thailand has called a 15-country senior officials' meeting for May 29, to find a way to deal with the flood of migrants. But activists fear any solutions may come too late to save the lives of hundreds, and possibly thousands, of the boat people as country after country turns them away.
More boats are thought to be in the area as thousands of Rohingya mostly from Myanmar, but with some Bangladeshis also among them, make their way to Malaysia - which had until this week been accommodating, but has now started pushing them back.
A crackdown on the human trafficking gangs that have been preying on the Rohingya when they arrive in Thailand en route to Malaysia has caused smugglers to abandon boats, leaving passengers stranded at sea, say activists tracking the seasonal migration which this year has reached unprecedented numbers.
Meanwhile, Thai police have identified Pajjuban Aungkachotephan, a former senior Satun province official, as a kingpin of the human trafficking racket. It was uncovered when the authorities found dozens of graves containing corpses and skeletons of migrants in jungle camps near the Malaysian border.
The latest find, on Tuesday, was a big camp with watchtowers and toilets that could have housed up to 1,000 people near the Malaysian border, less than 5km from a camp site where 26 bodies had been recovered earlier this month.
Indonesia 'will not turn away refugees'
By Zubaidah Nazeer, Indonesia Bureau Chief, In Jakarta, The Straits Times, 15 May 2015
THE Indonesian government will not turn away Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh who are being housed in a sports complex in Lhoksukon town in North Aceh regency, said Foreign Ministry officials.
So far, 582 migrants, including many ethnic Muslim Rohingya, have been given refuge in the overcrowded sports centre since local police found them stranded in boats in the waters off the regency over the weekend.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir yesterday said Indonesia did not sign a 1951 convention on refugees, but it will not turn them away.
"What Indonesia has done is given shelter and food to illegal migrants," he was quoted as saying by tribunnews.com. "What we do not do is force them back onto their boats and expel them from the country."
The regional administration, in cooperation with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), will look for uninhabited islands in the country to accommodate the migrants.
The hundreds of Rohingya asylum seekers, mostly Muslims, were evacuated from boats after getting stranded in northern Aceh waters, after failing to land in Malaysia.
Dozens of Rohingya have sought political asylum in Medan, North Sumatra.
Earlier this week, Indonesian officials said they had pushed back one boat and directed it to Malaysia after providing the occupants with food and water.
Some of the boats that found their way to Indonesia had no choice but to stop after running out of fuel or getting lost.
"The (Myanmar) government has created this crisis with its continued persecution of the Rohingya," said Mr Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
"Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have made things much worse with cold-hearted policies to push back this new wave of 'boat people' that put thousands of lives at risk.
"Other governments should urge the three governments to work together to rescue these desperate people and offer them humanitarian aid, help in processing claims, and resettlement places."
Mr Robertson said if South- east Asian nations are genuinely concerned about the mass flight of Rohingya from Myanmar, they should demand that Myanmar immediately end widespread rights abuses against the population.
"Ending discriminatory policies and ensuring full security so that Rohingya can safely and with dignity return to their homes in (Rakhine) State would be a good place to start," he said.
As facilities at the cramped centre in Lhoksukon town reached breaking point, with few toilets and poor ventilation, the local authorities began transferring migrants by bus on Wednesday afternoon to a larger complex in Kuala Cangkoi, a fishing town on the north coast. It was built as a tsunami evacuation centre and was not in use.
IOM deputy chief of mission Steve Hamilton told Agence France-Presse: "These people could be there for six, seven, eight or nine months before they get transferred somewhere else. There's nowhere to transfer them."
Bangladeshis resort to taking risky illegal route to Malaysia
By Porimol Palma, Belal Hossain Biplob And Shahtub Siddique Anik, Published The Straits Times, 15 May 2015
AS LEGAL channels for labour migration from Bangladesh have shrunk due to malpractices in the arrangements by both private agencies and the government, desperate jobseekers take the dangerous sea route to Malaysia.
Dreaming of high-paid jobs, they fall prey to a third party - transnational gangs pledging a secure sea voyage - and end up in a vicious web of abuses, including torture and captivity en route, forced labour or humiliating deportation.
Manpower export from Bangladesh to Malaysia has always been fraught with anomalies since it formally began in 1992. Corruption by some Bangladesh High Commission officials in Kuala Lumpur left as many as 50,000 workers illegal in 1996.
The burgeoning South-east Asian economy kept its doors closed to Bangladeshi workers for nearly a decade from 1997, except in 2000 when some 20,000 were granted visas.
The migration resumed in 2006 and continued till early 2009.
"Such repeated closing and opening of the Malaysian labour market was never the case for Nepal or Indonesia. But Bangladesh faced it mostly because of corruption," said Mr Mohammad Harun Al Rashid, coordinator of CARAM Asia, a regional network of organisations working on migration and health issues.
The rate was 84,000 taka when the private sector managed the recruitment in 2006 and early 2009. But studies found that workers were charged higher rates, by around 20,000 taka each, Mr Harun told The Daily Star over the phone from Kuala Lumpur.
Brokers, human resource managers of employers and outsourcing companies, and certain Malaysian officials are believed to have shared the extra money charged.
Another source of their moneymaking was having way more workers than required, showing fake demand.
In 2007 and 2008, over 40,000 Bangladeshi workers were sent but thousands of them remained unemployed or detained, and finally returned home empty-handed.
Mr Talat Mahmud, then labour counsellor of the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, allegedly went through many documents without verifying job demands as he had good connections with the manpower brokers in Malaysia. He was called back to Dhaka following Kuala Lumpur's cancellation of 55,000 work visas in early 2009.
Malaysia's immigration director-general Wahid Md Don was found guilty of accepting a RM60,000 bribe for approval of 4,337 visa applications for Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia on July 10, 2008.
On Oct 30, 2013, the official was sentenced to six years in prison and fined RM300,000.
Now with the government-to-government arrangement in place, the flow of bribe money to brokers and officials has stopped, said a Bangladeshi recruiting agent who has Malaysian business links.
"They now look to Nepal, India or Vietnam for workers," he said, requesting anonymity.
The recruitment from those countries is done through the private sector, which in Bangladesh is plagued by irregularities due to lack of regulations and monitoring.
Malaysian employers too are turning away from Bangladesh. They often complain of the laid-back attitude of government officials and bureaucratic tangles in the government-to-government arrangement, said Mr Ruhul Amin, joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies.
The agencies had talks with the government several times about the issues but things hardly changed, he said.
"So, Bangladeshi jobseekers are going illegally," Mr Ruhul added, pointing to the country's surplus labour and limited job opportunities.
Dr Zaid Bakht, research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said that every year, some two million youths join the labour force in the country.
Some 60 per cent of them are absorbed into domestic and foreign labour markets.
The rest remain either unemployed or underemployed; many often become desperate to find jobs abroad, even illegally.
Due to various irregularities by private recruiting agencies, Saudi Arabia imposed restrictions on Bangladeshi workers in 2008 and the UAE in 2012. Kuwait stopped taking Bangladeshi workers in 2006.
The three countries were the biggest job market for Bangladeshis.
Before 2008, between 50,000 and 100,000 Bangladeshis migrated to Saudi Arabia for jobs every year. Over the past few years, the number has come down to 5,000 to 7,000.
In the case of the UAE, the number was about 15,000, which is now 10,000 to 12,000.
Many youths now want to try their luck in Malaysia, which has an annual labour shortage of some 10,000.
One of them is Mr Mohammad Yakub, 27, of Paikarchar in Narsingdi. He used to work at a power loom factory which often remained closed.
A broker promised him a safe voyage to Malaysia and a monthly income of 50,000 taka, and Mr Yakub decided to give it a try.
But en route, he landed in a Thai jungle.
Held captive and tortured, ransomed and released, and jailed, he finally returned home in March this year.
His family had to pay a ransom of 25,000 taka for his release.
"We had to sell half of our homestead and borrow the rest of the amount," said his mother, Ms Sahera Begum, sitting in her hut at Kundapadi village.
"Our son has become too weak. After his return, he got a job at a local factory, but he cannot work hard as before."
Mr Yakub at least managed to return home. To determine how many lives were lost in the attempts at migration requires further studies.
THE DAILY STAR / ASIA NEWS NETWORK
Thailand has ignored Rohingyas' misery for too long
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee, Published The Straits Times, 15 May 2015
THAI officials should not pretend they have just learnt that people calling themselves "Rohingya" have fled from somewhere via trafficking networks to Thailand.
The Thai authorities under the military government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha are handling the issue of trafficking in Rohingya as if these unfortunate people have just arrived from Mars.
The government badly needs a comprehensive approach to cope with this complicated and tragic issue.
The origin of the Rohingya is still debatable, but this ethnic group has lived north-west of Myanmar, mostly in the state of Rakhine, for the entire memory of our generation.
Myanmar has refused to recognise them as national citizens and calls them illegal migrant Bengalis.
More than 1.5 million to two million Rohingyas were forced to leave their homes during Myanmar's independence in 1948, due to differences in race and religion, according to the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation, a group of social activists who champion their rights.
However, two million are still living in Myanmar while hundreds of thousands are moving along the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh.
A major exodus of Rohingyas has happened twice since Myanmar's independence: once in 1978 when the military regime of General Ne Win launched the Naga Min (Dragon King) operation to check "illegal migrants", and again in early 1990 after a military crackdown on democratic movement.
The current wave of Rohingya movement began without notice more than a decade ago when they sought better lives in South-east Asia.
Malaysia is their destination of choice but Thailand is the regional transit hub due to loose border control and corrupt officials.
The refugee movement came to public notice in early 2009, when some received brutal treatment from the Thai authorities (when vessels were allegedly pushed back to sea).
And problems in Rakhine State were exacerbated three years later when Muslim Rohingyas clashed with Buddhist Rakhines. The violence displaced more than 100,000 people who ended up in refugee camps.
With the emergence of human trafficking syndicates, it is estimated that more than 100,000 Rohingyas have managed to settle in South-east Asia.
Their adventures were not at all smooth.
Usually, they had to pay between US$90 (S$120) and US$370 in "boat fee" to board a vessel, but they could not get off unless another US$2,000 was paid, according to a United Nations report.
They were pressured, starved and beaten to extort payment from families and relatives to facilitate their travel. Those who had no relatives to pay for them told the UN they worked as labourers for smugglers for several months in order to secure their freedom.
Some were forced to work under hard conditions on fishery trawlers and farms to repay their debts from trafficking expenses. Others were held in brutal jungle camps in southern Thailand, pending payment.
It is too naive to say that Thai security officials knew nothing about these matters. Unless officials took bribes to allow them to continue their dangerous journey, they would be brutally deported and left to starve on the high seas.
Of more than 50 traffickers facing arrest warrants from Thai police, many are uniformed officials of many agencies.
But this could not stop the Rohingyas.
By the end of the monsoon season in October, Rohingyas sometimes mixed with Bangladeshis to begin their risky voyage in the Bay of Bengal to South-east Asia.
In the first quarter of this year, 25,000 people were estimated to have departed in irregular maritime movements from the Bay of Bengal.
The departure rate in the period was approximately double the departure rate reported in the first quarters of 2013 and last year, according to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report.
More than 300 died at sea during the first quarter of this year, bringing the total to 620 since last October, the report said.
The ongoing Thai crackdown - aimed at pleasing the United States for the benefit of upgrading Thailand's status in the Trafficking in Persons report - might not always yield good results.
The International Organisation for Migration said that as many as 8,000 boat people could be stranded at sea in the Bay of Bengal as the smugglers are reluctant to land.
Thai officials arrested, prosecuted and deported dozens of them over the past weeks after launching the crackdown on traffickers. Their fates are unknown.
THE NATION / ASIA NEWS NETWORK