“Plight of Rohingya already forgotten”

Regional countries and neighbors should press Burma’s ruling junta to cease in the systematic abuse of the Rohingya and provide necessary assistance to those who have fled to their shores, Human Rights Watch (HRW) argues in a new report.

“The treatment of the Rohingya in Burma is deplorable – the Burmese government doesn’t just deny Rohingya their basic rights, it denies they are even Burmese citizens,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“Instead of sidestepping the issue, ASEAN should be pressing Burma’s military rulers to end their brutal practices.”

In January 2009, cameras captured boatloads of starving Rohingya arriving in Southern Thailand and Indonesia. The photos, which show Thai navy ships towing boats of Rohingya back into the open seas to deter further arrivals, gave brief international prominence to the issue.

PhuketWan of Phuket first broke the story in a series of excellent articles.

Thousands of other journeys each year go unnoticed. In late 2008 and early 2009, the number of Rohingya departing from Bangladesh and Burma was estimated at 6,000, double the number from the previous year.

The 12-page report, “Perilous Plight: Burma’s Rohingya Take to the Seas,” examines the causes of the exodus of Rohingya people from Burma and Bangladesh, and their treatment once in flight to Southeast Asian countries.

Persecution and human rights violations against the Rohingya inside Burma, especially in Arakan state, have persisted for over 20 years, with insufficient international attention. Such abuses include extrajudicial killings, forced labor, religious persecution, and restrictions on movement, all exacerbated by a draconian citizenship law that leaves the Rohingya stateless.

Scores are feared to have died as a result of Thailand’s “push-back” policy. Some of the survivors who reached Indonesia or the Indian Andaman Islands described how Burmese naval personnel who had intercepted their boat on the open seas tortured and beat them. 
ASEAN leaders have admitted that a regional solution is necessary to address the annual exodus of Rohingya.

Yet ASEAN did not place the Rohingya on the formal agenda of its February summit meeting, and Burmese officials simply denied the Rohingya were from Burma, but said they would accept any “Bengali” who could prove Burmese citizenship.

“ASEAN’s collective inertia on the Rohingya’s plight is a stain on its reputation,” said Pearson. “ASEAN’s inaction also sends a clear message to Burma’s generals that their horrendous persecution can continue.”

In “Perilous Plight,” Human Rights Watch calls on Burma’s military government to recognize Rohingya as citizens, ensure their freedom of movement, and give human rights and humanitarian organizations access to Arakan state.

“Persecution of the Rohingya is nothing new, so it’s time for Burma’s neighbors to act to stop them from being further abused,” said Pearson.

“Rather than sending them back to Burma or into the open sea, countries receiving Rohingya should determine if they are refugees or asylum seekers and give them protection.”

Thailand’s recent ill-treatment of the Rohingya migrants and asylum seekers is an unfortunate continuation of past policy. Steadily increasing numbers of Rohingya arriving in southern Thailand have sparked a deterrence policy that violates Thailand’s international legal obligations towards asylum seekers.

In 2007, Thai authorities took into custody hundreds of Rohingya near Ranong in southern Thailand and sent them to a detention center further north in the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot. Soon after, over 80 detainees were forcibly returned to Burma in an area controlled by a pro-SPDC militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).

The DKBA is notorious for its involvement in drug trafficking, illegal logging and extortion of migrant workers. Most of the rest could not afford to be smuggled home; many trickled back into Thailand and some were eventually trafficked to Malaysia.

Thailand claims the Rohingya are a threat to national security. Military officials routinely accuse Rohingya of being Muslim mercenaries masquerading as migrant workers, coming to Thailand to volunteer with southern Thai Muslim separatist militants.

Royal Thai Navy Vice-Admiral Supot Prueska told reporters in 2007 that the authorities were “keeping a close watch on a group of Burmese Muslims called Rohingyas…they are not coming here to take up decent jobs, but only to help insurgents in the three provinces…these Rohingya mercenaries, aged between 20 and 40 have a violent past and were ready to take orders to do anything in exchange for money.”

“It is time to stop calling the Rohingya a forgotten people, as many headlines have described them. They are a foresworn people. Because they have no constituency in the West and come from a strategic backwater, no one wants them, even though the world is well aware of their predicament. No government in the region or the West should deny their plight, which has been reported on over the past 20 years. Their persecution has been a litany of horrors that the international community has been well aware of, but largely unwilling to address”, writes the authors of the report.

In early 2009, thousands of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from Burma and Bangladesh made perilous journeys by sea to southern Thailand and Indonesia. Scores are feared to have died as a result of Thailand’s “push-back” policy – towing Rohingyas back out to sea to deter further arrivals.

Decades of such mistreatment have pushed many Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, and from there every year thousands of Rohingya men and boys pay to be smuggled to Malaysia via other Southeast Asian countries. Some are fleeing for their lives; others are economic migrants seeking to feed their families. Because they lack official papers, almost everywhere they go they live in fear of arrest and possible repatriation to Burma.