The plight of the Rohingya

The Rohingya people of northern Myanmar have been defined in the last year by UN agencies as the most persecuted people in the world. Despite having lived in Myanmar for generations, the Myanmar government defines them as illegal Bangladeshi migrants, and actively discriminates against them. Unwilling to go back to Bangladesh which does not want them either, they have now resorted to fleeing by sea, with sometimes disastrous consequences. In the last week, there have been heart-breaking scenes of emaciated men, women and children reaching up to catch bottles of water thrown by journalists who had found them in the open seas off Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. None of these countries want the Rohingya either, with Thai naval personnel boarding one boat full of Rohingya and Bangladeshis, repairing its broken engine, leaving water and food and then forcing the craft and its human cargo out of Thai waters, bound for who-knows-where.

The Rohingya are part of a vast human trafficking crisis that afflicts the countries of Southeast Asia. It demands an integrated and coordinated response if a human tragedy on a vast scale is not to unfold. As with the similar crisis in the Mediterranean region and in the European Union countries — that is just not happening and there seems little likelihood that it will. Myanmar is threatening to boycott an upcoming regional summit, much to the outrage of the UN and human rights groups in the US and around the world. Human Rights Watch has termed the situation “a deadly game of human ping-pong”. It is not wrong. There are seismic shifts in human population movement globally, with millions fleeing war, persecution and poverty. Economic migrants mingle with the refugees from conflict, and the resources of destination countries are stretched, their internal political problems exacerbated by the migrant influx. The pleas by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the countries of Southeast Asia keep their borders and ports open in order to help vulnerable people is going to fall on deaf ears. People smugglers continue to make a profit and we are days away from the creation of yet another maritime graveyard. The Rohingya lose again.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2015.

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