Im Süden Thailands wurden in der vergangenen Woche Gräber mit den Überresten von auf Gummiplantagen zu Tode geschundenen Rohingya-Zwangsarbeitern gefunden, der Anlaß zu Polizei-Razzien gegen ein seit Jahren bekanntes und geduldetes Netzwerk aus Kidnappern, Erpressern, Menschenhändlern, Sklavenhaltern. Vermutlich floß das Schmiergeld an die Staatsgewalt nicht in der gewohnten Höhe.
°"We have testimony that places Thai officials in trafficking camps negotiating with traffickers while hundreds of people are held captive. Torture, killings, deprivations, and other abuses have all occurred with impunity. We’ve documented how Thai authorities have ‘rescued’ Rohingya asylum seekers and then sold or handed them to trafficking syndicates, who in turn tortured them.” ...
"Every single thing is under the control of the authorities,” he said. “The boat drivers, the brokers … always have to negotiate with authorities. Without bribing the security forces [military or police], it is not easy to leave. But people are handed over again to the traffickers in Thailand or [near the] Malaysia border. From there, they will be released by paying around 30 lakhs kyats [about £2,000]. People who cant afford to pay are sold out or killed.°
Die Konsequenz der Razzien in Thailand sind etwa 8000 Rohingya, die in der Straße von Malakka auf wenig seetüchtigen Booten bei knappem Wasser und Nahrung gefangen gehalten werden. Weil im Moment niemand in Thailand, Indonesien, Malaysia mit Sklavenhandel und -haltung in Zusammenhang gebracht werden will.
°"Boats seem to have stopped coming - but some are en route and some are waiting to off-load. Where they used to process people on land, for final payments, they are now doing this off-shore - so more people are being held off-shore. Now things have become so hot, there's nowhere for them to go"°
Vom indonesischen Militär wurden heute nacht vier Boote mit etwa 600 meist burmesischen Rohingya aufs Meer zurück geschleppt. Weil sie woandershin gewollt hätten, so ein Militärsprecher.
Die Rohingya sind eine Ethnie, die hauptsächlich in Myanmar, aber auch in Bangladesch, Thailand, Malaysia seit dem 15. Jhdt lebt, mutmaßlich sind sie niedergelassene Nachfahren arabischer Händler. Von den britischen Kolonialherren wurden ab Anfang des 19.Jhdts vermehrt Rohingya aus Bangladesch zur Ansiedlung in Rakhine und Kachin genötigt, um dort für die Briten auf Plantagen zu arbeiten. Ein weiterer Hintergrund burmesischer Ressentiments gegen Muslime entspringt dem Umstand, daß muslimische Inder im Auftrag und Schlepptau der Briten Handel und Bankwesen in Burma dominierten. Die Rohingya sind ebenfalls Muslime, haben eine eigene Sprache und Kultur, eine relativ dunkle Haut und werden in Myanmar seit den 1930er Jahren verfolgt, HRW und UN stuften sie schon vor x Jahren als die am meisten verfolgte Minderheit der Welt ein.
In einigen Medien thematisiert wurde ihre Verfolgung in den 1990er Jahren, als eine Volkszählung die runde Million Rohingya aus Myanmar ausbürgerte und zu Bengalis erklärte, sie wurden damit staaten- und vollkommen rechtlos. Seit dem Ende der Militärdiktatur wird ihre Verfolgung zusätzlich befeuert durch den selbsternannten 'Burmese Bin Laden', den buddhistischen Mönch Ashin Wirathu, dem Führer der muslimhassenden 969-Kampagne einer 'rassischen und religiösen Reinheit' und Initiator diverser Pogrome mit Hunderten von Toten und Vertreibungen von Hundertausenden Rohingya.
Aung San Suu Kyi, die Ikone der Gewaltlosigkeit, lächelt, winkt und schweigt, wenn sie nicht die Aktionen des Militärs ausdrücklich lobt, das den buddhistischen Mob ganz gern tagelang unbehelligt wüten läßt.
Und die Moral von der Geschicht?
Man achte bei Flucht und Menschenhandel unbedingt auf hinreichenden oder regelmäßigen Schmiergeldfluß. Weil Staaten nicht an ihren Bürgern und die Welt nicht an Staatenlosen interessiert ist.
Anschließender Blog, gleiches Thema: Schwimmende Särge
Staatenlosigkeit: Flucht
UNHCR Fragen und Antworten zu Staatenlosigkeit
Sieh die Welt Wir sind Rohingya
Guardian Rohingya migrants adrift in Andaman Sea – in pictures
Time 2014 The Rohingya, Burma's Forgotten Muslims by James Nachtwey
Journeyman Pictures (über Thailand) Rohingya Refugees Face Smugglers, Slavery & Bad Boats
Flucht: Erpressung: Sklaverei:
BBC Myanmar's migrants: The man buying back refugees from traffickers
AsiaOne: Slave trade booms in dark triangle
Guardian-Dossier Modern-day slavery in focus: Thailand
UNODC Migrant Smuggling in Asia
Al Jazeera People & Power - Outcast: Adrift with Burma's Rohingya
The Irrawaddy Trafficked Fishermen Arrive in Rangoon from Indonesia
Channel 4 (2013) Nightmare island where traffickers imprison Burma's Rohingya
The Atlantic Ransoms and Reunions: The Internet Huts of Burma
Human Rights Watch (14.5.2015) End Rohingya Boat Pushbacks
Human Rights at Sea Bangladeshis and Rohingya Boatpeople kidnapped by Human Trafficking Gangs to be sold into Slavery
UNHCR South-East Asia Irregular Maritime Movements Januar-März 2015
The Arakan Project
North Arakan: an open prison for the Rohingya in Burma
Forced labour still prevails: An overview of forced labour practices in North Arakan, Burma
Stateless Rohingya Children in Myanmar
Unregistered Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: Crackdown, forced displacement and hunger
Fortify Rights
Myanmar: Authorities Complicit in Rohingya Trafficking, Smuggling
“Accountability and Transformation: Tier Rankings in the Fight against Human Trafficking”
Website, Video zur Arbeitsweise, weitere Publikationen
969-Bewegung:
arte Myanmar: Buddhisten hassen Rohingyas
The National The 'Burmese bin Laden' fomenting violence against Myanmar's Muslims
BBC Ashin Wirathu: Myanmar and its vitriolic monk und (News Channel) Myanmar's Extremist Monk
Economist Fears of a new religious strife
Vice Is Burma’s Anti-Muslim Violence Led by “Buddhist Neo-Nazis”?
PressTV The Racist Monk of Myanmar
International Business Times Myanmar Bans Time Magazine for Cover of 'Bin Laden Monk' Wirathu
Ethnische Säuberung in Rakhine 2012
Human Rights Watch All you can do is pray Satellitenaufnahmen der Zerstörung von Rohingya-Häusern, beispielhaft Kyaukpyu
Al Jazeera The Hidden Genocide
Geopolitik
Guardian 'Earth Inside' The dirty fossil fuel secret behind Burma's democratic fairytale
Asean und der Rest der Welt
Guardian How to solve the Asian migrant boats crisis – expert views
The Malaysian Insider (Charles Santiago) Refugee crisis is Asean’s great moral paralysis
Deutsche Welle Opinion: A foreseeable crisis
Philippine Daily Inquirer Wandering Nations
The Malaysian Insider Asean’s Rohingya left to die – Charles Santiago
Letzte Woche in den Medien:
Deutsche Welle Tödlicher Menschenhandel in Thailand
UNHCR calls for joint response in wake of "Rohingya mass grave" in Thailand
Guardian Thailand human trafficking death toll far greater than feared
Medien 12.5.2015:
BBC 'Thousands' of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants stranded at sea
Süddeutsche 8000 Menschen gefangen auf offenem Meer
Deutsche Welle Bootsflüchtlinge: "Weitere 8000 warten auf Rettung" Indonesien: Bootsflüchtlinge wieder ausgesetzt
International Business Times Myanmar Rohingya migrants face starving to death in stranded boat near Malaysia
Medien 13.5.2015
nd Aus dem Dschungel in die Seenot
The Sydney Morning Herald 'Some are already dead': Rohingya Muslims stranded at sea by Indonesia and Malaysia
Guardian Malaysia tells thousands of Rohingya refugees to 'go back to your country' und Rohingya Muslims brave death at sea to escape 'open-air prison' in Burma
New York Times The Rohingya Refugees, Adrift
Bangkok Post Region unites to deny Rohingya asylum
Telepolis Rohingya: Was bleibt, ist das offene Meer
Deutsche Welle Rohingya, die Heimatlosen
Myanmar Times Malaysian authorities to launch air search in response to distress calls
Zeit Online Gefangen auf dem Meer und (Fotos) Hunderte gerettet, Tausende noch auf dem Meer
Medien 14.5.2015
The Daily Beast ‘Pass the Trash’: The Tragic Truth About S.E. Asia's New Boat People
BenarNews Malaysia, Thailand Defend Decision to Stop More Migrants From Landing
The Straits Time (Singapur) Roots of migrant problem lie in colonialism
New York Times Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman Sea
The Nation (Thailand) A regional crisis with roots in Myanmar
New Zealand Herald Sea of blame, no haven for Asia's migrants
BBC Why has Rohingyas crisis blown up?
Khaosod English: Thai Govt: Ship of Abandoned Myanmar Migrants Will Not Land in Thailand
Guardian Migrant crisis grips south-east Asia as countries play human ping-pong
New York Times Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman Sea
BBC Stranded Myanmar Rohingya boat migrants desperate
Daily Star (Libanon) Migrant boat found in Thai waters: AFP reporter ->Asian Correspondent Thailand to prosecute Rohingya migrants; new boat found off Koh Lipe
The Australian Rohingya Crisis
ABC-News How Southeast Asia has created its own humanitarian crisis
Malay Mail Stop opressing Rohingya minority, says Malaysia to Myanmar
New York Times Crisis at Sea
AP/Yahoo Malaysia turns away 2 boats with more than 800 migrants
Medien 15.5.2015
Foreign Policy A People on the Brink
The Guardian view on the Rohingya refugee crisis: cruel and stupid
The Diplomat Asia’s Watery Graveyard for Asylum Seekers
Wall Street Journal Southeast Asia at Sea Over Migrant Crisis
The Conversation South east Asia’s migrant boat crisis is a global responsibility
New York Times Boat With Hundreds of Migrants From Myanmar Heads Farther Out to Sea
Myanmar Times Can Myanmar, and the region, continue to ignore the crisis?
SPON Drama in Asien: Bootsflüchtlinge berichten von qualvollen Tagen auf See
CNN Migrant boat re-enters Malaysian waters after refusing offer to land: Thai officials
Medien 16.5.2015
BBC Myanmar denies blame for migrant boat crisis
Deutsche Welle Migrants in 'maritime ping-pong' in Southeast Asia
The Malaysian Insider Najib’s statement on Rohingya a joke, says DAP
Hindustan Times Of smugglers and kingpins: Southeast Asia's big money trade in humans; brokers prey on Rohingyas' misery
Medien 17.5.2015
Guardian 'They hit us, with hammers, by knife': Rohingya migrants tell of horror at sea
Guardian Burma’s boatpeople ‘faced choice of annihilation or risking their lives at sea’
Dawn (Pakistan) In Asian seas, a migrant boat finds nowhere to land
AsiaOne (Malaysia) Journey through hell and beyond
Financial Times Southeast Asia tragedy unfolding in three acts
The Nation (Pakistan) Thailand finds 100 migrants on island, many still adrift
Bangkok Post Regional paralysis on Rohingya crisis
Medien 18.5.2015
Reuters No word on hundreds of Asian "boat people" pushed back to sea
Telepolis Der Horror von Malakka
Frankfurter Rundschau Inhumanes Pingpong
Foreign Policy Southeast Asia’s Migrant Crisis Explained, in Maps
Deutsche Welle Flüchtlingskrise in Südostasien: "Armselige Heuchelei und kalte Missachtung"
SPON Die Qualen der Rohingya: Erst Flüchtling, dann Sklave
Guardian 'We helped out of solidarity': Indonesian fishermen come to aid of boat migrants
The Sydney Morning Herald ASEAN urged to act swiftly on Rohingyas as aid resources 'limited'
NZZ Tödlicher Überlebenskampf auf hoher See
Zeit Online Der schleichende Völkermord an den Rohingya
The Daily Star Indonesian fishermen 'told not to save migrants'
Kommentare 124
Danke fuer den Beitrag.
Ich bin vor einer Weile über dieses Thema gestolpert, weil diese entrechteten Menschen als Sklaven für verschiedene Arbeiten eingesetzt werden, unter anderem auch in der Fischfang-Industrie, deren Produkte in unseren Discountern landen.
http://forum.thailand-tip.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=13404.0;images
Danke für die Infos und Links. Ich kannte den Hintergrund der Fluchtbwegungen dort nicht.
nd heute:
°In Thailand stehen derzeit 49 Personen aus dieser »Branche« auf der Fahndungsliste. Unter 15, die den Sicherheitskräften schon ins Netz gingen, sind ein Dorfbürgermeister, sein Stellvertreter und ein Mitglied des Provinzrates von Satun im Süden des Landes. Dort nämlich, wo Thailand nur ein schmales Band ist mit der Grenze zu Myanmar auf der einen und der zu Malaysia auf der anderen Seite, mit zerklüfteten Küsten und teils dichten Dschungelgebieten, befindet sich die zentrale Transitzone für die Flüchtlinge und die Geschäftemacher, die von ihrer Not profitieren.
Auf 30 weitere Gräber - Überreste eines der Transitlager im Dschungel des äußersten Südens Thailands, wo die Rohingya vielfach wie Vieh gehalten, nach Augenzeugenberichten teilweise gefoltert werden - stießen Polizisten am vergangenen Donnerstag. Sie befanden sich auf dem Gelände eines ehemaligen muslimischen Friedhofs, der schon seit vier Jahrzehnten nicht mehr benutzt wird. Vermutlich hat dort nur die jetzt erhöhte Wachsamkeit zur Entdeckung der frischen Grabstellen geführt.
Denn schon am 1. Mai hatte ein Dorfbewohner in einem anderen Teil der Provinz Songhkla die Sicherheitskräfte zu 32 Gräbern geführt, auf die er beim Pilzsammeln gestoßen war. Auch auf einen Überlebenden traf das Einsatzteam bei der Bergungsmission in dem schwer zugänglichen Waldstück auf einem Hügel. Er wurde umgehend in ein Krankenhaus gebracht. In medizinischer Behandlung ist auch eine Rohingya-Frau, nach deren Aussage sich irgendwo in der Gegend noch ein Lager mit wenigstens 400 Flüchtlingen befindet, ein zweites soll sogar 800 bis 1000 Insassen haben. Da sich die Leidgeprüften in der Gegend nicht auskennen, fallen den Geretteten genauere Ortsangaben schwer. Ebenfalls am Donnerstag wurden zudem 13 Rohingya am Rande eines Waldes aufgegriffen, die von den Schleppern mitten im Dschungel verlassen worden waren.°
all inclusive.....
The Sydney Morning Herald:
°"There are 400 on board. Some are already dead but I cannot tell you how many because I do not have the strength to move around the ship," Abdul Rahamad told a journalist from the Phuketwan online news website by mobile phone.
"We have been at sea for a month," he said in a weak voice in the Rohingya language.
"This is a Thai trawler modified to carrying people," he said. "We are not sure where we are. We have used up most food and water…we beg for your help."
The teenager said the last he heard 22 people had died on board the ship.
"It's very crowded…many people are exhausted and unable to move," he said, speaking on one of three mobile phones provided by people smugglers allowed to arrange ransom money from their relatives. ...
Since more than 1500 migrants came ashore in Indonesia and Malaysia on Sunday and Monday both countries said they would push back out to sea any more boats that arrive without permission.
Thailand has arranged a summit of regional countries on May 29 to discuss what refugee advocates describe as an escalating humanitarian crisis.
Malaysia has bluntly told long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar they are not welcome after for years allowing tens of thousands of them to quietly come ashore and live among Malaysians.
"We won't let any foreign boats come in," said Tan Kok Kwee, first admiral of Malaysia's maritime enforcement agency.
Unless the boats were unseaworthy and sinking, he said, the navy would provide "provisions and send them away".
The declaration came hours after Indonesia, appearing to have adopted Canberra's boats-tow-back policy, pushed back a ship carrying hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants and asylum seekers, including women and children, after providing fuel, food and water.
"They should not have entered Indonesian waters without our permission," said Fuad Basya, a spokesman for the Indonesian Army. ...
Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project, who for years has tracked boats making the dangerous crossing of the Bay of Bengal, estimates that between 6000 and 20,000 people are still in peril at sea.
She has been in touch by mobile telephone with passengers on one boat that ran out of food three days ago.
They can see land but have no idea where they are.
"You just can't let these people die at sea," she said.°
Oh, ich fürchte, man kann und man wird, Australien macht es vor.
Hatte schon mal davon gehört. Das war aber nicht mit so vielen Informationen versehen. Furchtbar, wieviel Ungerechtigkeit es auf der Welt gibt. Die Moral von der Geschicht mit dem Schmiergeldfluss stimmt sicher.
Es ist eine traurige Welt, die nicht an Staatenlosen interessiert ist.
Guardian heute:
°Malaysia said on Wednesday it would no longer accept new arrivals of ethnic minority Rohingya fleeing persecution in Burma, as the UN refugee agency expressed surprise that south-east Asian nations were now turning back boats. ...
Malaysia’s deputy home minister, Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, however, said his country would use tough measures, including turning back asylum-seeker boats and deportation in order to send the “right message”.
“We don’t want them to come here,” the deputy minister said. His ministry oversees the police and immigration agencies.
“We are not prepared to accept that number coming into our shores and those people who are already in, we are sending them home anyway.
“I would like them to be turned back and ask them to go back to their own country. We cannot tell them we are welcoming them.”
He said Malaysia would only consider rescuing asylum seekers on humanitarian grounds if their boats had capsized. ...
For many Rohingyas, relatively affluent Malaysia came to be seen as one of the last safe havens in a region where many countries have been cracking down on boat people in recent years.
Rohingya asylum seekeers in Malaysia were given documents issued by the UN refugee agency, acknowledging their need to be protected, although the country is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention. While they are not officially allowed to work, authorities turn a blind eye to those working in the informal sector. ...
Some of the estimated 8,000 Bangladeshi and Rohingya boat people have been on the perilous sea journey since early March and are in urgent need of medical treatment to save their lives, International Organisation for Migration Asia-Pacific spokesman Joe Lowry said.°
NYT heute:
°Last June, the United States downgraded Thailand and Malaysia to the worst category in its annual human trafficking report. But the government of Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, who seized power in Thailand in a coup a year ago, is only now cracking down on smugglers. ...
The problem is that while governments are finally taking steps against smugglers, they have shown little mercy for their victims. Thailand has deported many Rohingyas back to Myanmar, where they face continued persecution and death threats.°
Ein NYT-Video von Juni 2014 über die Situation der Rohingya in Myanmar: 21st Century Concentration Camps
Bangkok Post heute:Region unites to deny Rohingya asylum
Vice im März 2013 über die Muslimhasser der buddhistischen 969-Bewegung und die Vorteile, die die "demokratische" Regierung in Myanmar daraus zieht:
°Vice: What does the Burmese government have to gain from this violence?
Dr. Muang Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist:
There are three goals, as far as I can tell. One is, the military leadership has swapped their generals’ uniforms for civilian clothing, but at heart, they still remain irredeemably authoritarian and dictatorial. They are security obsessed and some of them feel the reforms that are unfolding in the country are going too far. So they want to slow it down and roll back the reform process. In order to do that, they must create social instability and use volatile situations as an excuse to say, “The people can’t handle freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of organization. Therefore, we need to have a strong handle on the situation to make sure people stay in line and don’t kill each other.”
Secondly, when all these waves of violence against Rohingya Muslims started last year, the military and the proxy political party of the military was in a worrisome situation because it lost by a landslide in the elections. So within two months of their defeat, they decided to create this very powerful anti-Muslim communal sentiment around the country. And now, [activist and political leader An San] Suu Kyi is in a difficult situation because she can only speak the liberal language of human rights and democracy, which is not as powerful as the ideology that the military and these neo-Nazi monks have whipped up. When it comes to fighting this kind of abnormal religious movement, the language of human rights is never enough.
Thirdly, I think the military is not leaving anything to chance. They have another round of elections in 2015, and they want to make sure that they have a new proxy political movement that they can use to square off Suu Kyi’s party. As a result, the 969 neo-Nazi movement is the most popular movement in the country.°
Al-Jazeera-Dokumentation über die ethnischen Säuberungen in Rakhine 2012: the hidden Genocide
Thailand Rohingya Refugees Face Smugglers, Slavery & Bad Boats
Der Kommentar von Guardian wurde gemeldet: werde ich sicher nicht einklappen, weil ich die Quelle für ausgesprochen lesenswert halte.
Anders gesagt: inhaltsfreie Melderei kann sich gern auch gespart werden, danke.
Danke für den Link!
Herausragend informativ, und erschütternd. Das wusste ich bis dato nicht. Danke!
Grüßle, Diander
BBC im September 2013 über die buddhistische 969-Bewegung und den selbsternannten 'Burmese Bin Laden' Ashin Wirathu
Noch eine Dokumentation über die 969-Bewegung von PressTV
Außerdem: Punk will never die! taz 2013
Punks verteidigen Buddhas Lehren
Radikale, buddhistische Mönche in Birma hetzen gegen Muslime. Viele sehen tatenlos zu. Nur einige Punkrocker wagen dagegen zu protestieren. ...
„Wären sie richtige Mönche, würde ich gar nichts sagen, aber das sind sie nicht“, sagt Kyaw Kyaw, Sänger der Band Rebel Riot, während der Schlagzeuger den nächsten Song gegen religiöse Heuchelei anzählt. „Sie sind Nationalisten, Faschisten. Keiner will es hören, doch das ist die Wahrheit.“ ...
Dies gab auch Mönchen wie Wirathu von der radikalen Bewegung „969“ eine Stimme. Er heizt die antimuslimische Stimmung an, propagiert den Boykott muslimischer Geschäfte und wendet sich gegen Ehen buddhistischer Frauen mit Muslimen. ...
Wirathu warnt, durch eine höhere Geburtenrate könnten die Muslime, deren Bevölkerungsanteil bisher vier Prozent beträgt, zur Mehrheit werden. In den letzten Monaten griffen buddhistische Mobs in manchen Regionen Muslime an und prügelten sie zu Tode.
Mönche gelten in Birma, wo der Buddhismus zur Identität gehört, als unangreifbar. Deshalb schweigen viele. Andere rechtfertigen die Übergriffe damit, Muslime seien eine Bedrohung für Birmas Kultur und Traditionen.
„Die Leute sollten sich die Lehren Buddhas anschauen und fragen, hat er das im Sinn gehabt?“, fragt Ye Ngwe Soe, der 27-jährige Frontmann von Birmas beliebtester Punkband No U Turn. ...
Neben den Punks ergreifen nur wenige Mönche und Bürgerrechtler offen Partei gegen die religiös motivierte Gewalt. „Ich bin sicher, dass viele Birmesen dies für totalen Wahnsinn halten, doch sie wagen es nicht, das offen zu sagen“, meint der schwedische Birma-Experte und Journalist Bertil Lintner. „Sonst werden sie von diesen religiösen Fanatikern angegriffen.“ ...
Präsident Thein Sein verbot sogar eine Ausgabe des US-Magazins Time, das Wirathu als „Gesicht des buddhistischen Terrors“ auf dem Titel hatte. Sein sagte, er unterstütze die Bewegung „969“ und betrachte den extremistischen Mönch als „Sohn Buddhas“. Oppositionsführerin Suu Kyi schweigt. Sie fürchtet offenbar negative Folgen für ihren Wahlkampf 2015, sollte sie als antibuddhistisch wahrgenommen werden.
Nur die kleine Schar der Punkrocker spricht sich offen gegen die fanatischen Mönche aus. Schon während der Militärherrschaft, als sie nur in verlassenen Gebäuden oder privat auftreten konnten, nannten sie Machtmissbrauch beim Namen.
„Sie können uns festnehmen, das ist uns egal“, sagt Kyaw Kyaw, der 26-jährige Sohn eines Polizisten. „Darauf haben wir uns mental vorbereitet. Aber wir wollen unsere Meinung sagen.“
Vielen Dank für den Beitrag.
Ja, die Sklaverei ist "heute weltweit geächtet und vielerorts durch zahlreiche Gesetze verboten. Andererseits blüht der weltweite Sklavenhandel wie nie zuvor in der Geschichte. Die totale Ausbeutung von Menschen als bloßes Material kennt keine Grenzen, nur die Erscheinungsformen haben sich geändert." Man kann sich dem nicht entziehen! (Arbeitssklaven, Sexsklaven; Kindersoldaten etc.) Ist das deshalb kein Asylgrund?
Ich reibe mir jedes Mal die Augen, wenn z.B. Thailandurlauber über die entspannten und stets freundlichen Buddhisten in Thailand reden. Mal abgesehen davon, dass dort die strengste Art des Buddhismus herrscht, gehört es zur Selbstverständlichkeit, dass insbesondere Mädchen resp. junge Frauen das Geld ranschaffen gerade auch mit Prostitution, um die Familie zu versorgen.
Da wundert es mich nicht, dass in einem Land, in dem seit langem bürgerkriegsähnliche und vielerorts feudale Zustände herrschen, Menschen versklavt werden. Schlimm!
gerne, scheint ja nicht jede(r) hier so zu sehen......
Guardian-Blog 'Earth Inside' 2013, Dr. Nafeez Ahmed:
Big Oil, Burma and the Genocide Against the Rohingya The dirty fossil fuel secret behind Burma's democratic fairytale
°As Forbes reports , thanks to Burma's "vast, untapped reserves of oil and natural gas" – estimated at between 11 trillion and 23 trillion cubic feet – "and with sanctions over and a world thirsty for new sources of energy, Western multinationals are eager to sign deals."
But foreign companies must partner with local companies to be able to bid. This condition has spurred Myanmar's crony capitalist elite of fewer than 20 families – many of whom built their business empires on the back of state favours from the former military junta – to rebrand themselves as honest brokers for western investors looking for their next regional venture.
...
Foreign investment is currently dominated by Chinese, Thai and Indian firms, who operated relatively unfazed by western sanctions, but American, British and French multinationals such as Chevron, BP, Shell, and Total are jockeying to make up for lost time.
Yet the scramble to open up Burma for business has played a direct role in inflaming community tensions. One of the most prominent culprits is the Shwe Gas Project led by South Korean and Indian companies, to export natural gas via pipeline from Arakan state to China's Yunnan province. The 2,800km overland pipeline is slated to become operational this year.
The project plans to produce 500 million cubic feet (mcfd) of gas per day for 30 years, supplying 400 mcfd to China, and the remaining 100 mcfd to factories owned by the Burmese government, military and associated business elites.
The losers from this venture are the Burmese people and environment. An extensive report by the Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), a Burmese community-based human rights network, documented the destruction of local fishing and farming industries, including confiscation of thousands of acres of land to "clear areas for the pipeline and associated infrastructure", from 2010 to 2011. Tens of thousands have been left jobless, with little or no compensation or employment opportunities.
The pipeline also cuts through the Arakan Yoma forest ecosystems of the Western Mountain Range, part of the Eastern Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, contributing to soil erosion and endangering species. One third of coral reefs north of Kyauk Phyu town have already been seriously damaged, undermining fish and marine life, and local fishing. Freshwater rivers and waterways have been dredged for sand and gravel for construction purposes, and are set to become dumping grounds for toxic materials.
In December 2011, the pipeline project sparked widespread anger across Arakan's cities and rural areas, as local people demanded provision of 24 hour electricity. Ranked the second most impoverished state of Burma by the UN Development Programme, approximately 3 million people living in Arakan have no access to public electricity, with just a few major cities able to access only five to six hours of electricity per day, provided by private companies at extortionate prices of 400-600 Kyat per unit (compared to 25 Kyat per unit in Rangoon). Overall, Burma is by far the poorest country in Southeast Asia, with a third of the population living in poverty.
The eruption of ethnic violence across Arakan against ethnic Rohingyas six months later in 2012 was therefore most likely triggered by the simmering tensions wrought by escalating economic marginalisation. On the one hand, Arakan's deepening economic crisis, fuelled by the state-backed pipeline project, laid the groundwork for an increase in xenophobia and racism toward the Rohingya. On the other, Burmese state agencies appear to have deliberately fostered the ethnic cleansing campaign to divert populist anger away from the devastating impact of the pipeline project, and instead toward the most easy and vulnerable target to hand.
Even as violence against the Rohingya escalates, conflict has also broken out along the pipeline route between Burmese security forces and local armed resistance groups linked to the Kachin state, where people have faced arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labour, rape and sexual violence at the hands of the Burma Army.
The plight of these different groups underscores that the fairytale of Burma's rosy democratic transition is exactly that - a fairytale.°
Telepolis:
°Rohingya: Was bleibt, ist das offene Meer
Fabian Köhler 13.05.2015
Die indonesische Marine schleppt sie aufs offene Meer. Thailand geht militärisch gegen sie vor. Malaysia macht die Grenzen dicht. Und in Myanmar droht der Völkermord.
Es sind Bilder wie man sie in Europa nur zu gut kennt: Auf winzigen Holzbooten drängen sich hunderte Menschen eng zusammen. Viele sind ausgehungert und dehydriert. Ein Flüchtling berichtet von der Verzweiflung an Deck, als das Schiff abdrehte. In einem Auffanglager liegt ein weinendes Baby in den Armen seiner Mutter. Und im Fernsehen spricht ein Politiker davon, Schlepperbanden zerschlagen zu wollen. Nur diesmal stammen die Bilder nicht von den Küsten Libyens oder den Lagern Lampedusas. Im südostasiatischen Meer spielt sich momentan einen Flüchtlingskatastrophe ab, die jener im Mittelmeer in ihrem Ausmaß in nichts nachsteht.http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/44/44924/44924_1.jpg
...
Nach Zahlen des Flüchtlingshilfswerks der Vereinten Nationen UNHCR versuchten allein in diesem Jahr 25.000 Rohingya Myanmar und Bangladesh zu verlassen. Vom größten maritimen Flüchtlingsexokuds seit dem Vietnamkrieg ist die Rede. Mindestens 300 sollen bisher auf offener See gestorben sein, berichten Augenzeugen. Verhungert, verdurstet oder von Schleppern ermordet.
Eine Hoffnung blieb ihnen noch bis Anfang der Woche: Das wirtschaftlich starke und mehrheitlich muslimische Malaysia hieß in der Vergangenheit Rohingya-Flüchtlinge meist willkommen, auch weil sie zu billigeren Löhnen arbeiteten als die einheimische Bevölkerung. Doch auch dieser letzte Zufluchtsort scheint ihnen nun genommen zu werden: "Wir lassen keine ausländischen Boote mehr herein", erklärte der Chef der malaysischen Marine Tan Kok Kwee am Dienstag. Was bleibt, ist das offene Meer.°
UNHCR South-East Asia Irregular Maritime Movements Januar-März 2015
Deutsche Welle: Rohingya, die Heimatlosen
Guardian: Rohingya Muslims brave death at sea to escape 'open-air prison' in Burma
°Members of the Rohingya ethnic minority have taken to the sea to flee persecution in Burma, but their options are narrowing as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia refuse new migrants. Residents of the cramped Aung Ming Lar ghetto reveal a bitterly hard life with many willing to risk everything to get away ...
“She was vomiting and had diarrhoea, but I could not take her to the hospital,” he says. “There was no doctor that could visit her, so she died here.” Pormin Vibi was just 18 years old.
She was among about 4,000 Muslims of the Rohingya minority living in what amounts to a ghetto known as Aung Ming Lar, a cramped quarter of Buddhist-dominated Sittwe in Burma’s northwest state of Rakhine.
For three years the community has been virtually closed off from the outside world by police checkpoints and barbed wire.
Living under what are described as apartheid-like conditions – the UN calls it a “clear case of segregation” ...
In 1982 the military junta under Ne Win stripped them of their citizenship. A succession of post-colonial regimes has refused to recognise their claim to be identified as Rohingya – a term of relatively recent political coinage adopted by an astute leadership, mostly in exile.
Instead the government insists most are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and classifies them as Bengalis, even though some claim roots before the colonial era – when thousands did arrive – to as far back as the 15th century when the Arakan kingdom was famed for its cosmopolitan openness. ...
Al Qaida and Islamic State have threatened to extend their cause to the Muslim population in Myanmar which did launch a short-lived “jihad” after the second world war.
According to the International Crisis Group, the extreme conditions endured by the Rohingya could radicalise elements, although it saw that risk as limited by the hope of the Muslim minority to obtain the support of western governments in their campaign to be accepted as citizens of Myanmar with full rights.
A decision in February by president Thein Sein’s reformist government to revoke their “temporary” identity cards has disenfranchised the community ahead of parliamentary elections due to be held in November. In the meantime they have been told to apply again for citizenship.
“They are not letting us vote,” says the father of Pormin Vibi. “They will give us citizenship only if we define ourselves as Bengali, but we are not, we are from Myanmar. We want to stay here, where should we go? We are from here,” he says.°
'Heartbeat of the Nation' Myanmar Times:
°First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee, northern region head at Malaysia’s maritime enforcement agency, told The Myanmar Times that concerns about the condition of the boats and those on board had prompted the decision to send out the force's bombardier plane to search for vessels.
"It will sweep the whole sea around Langkawi. Once we spot them we'll ask for further assistance so we can assess the situation and make sure they have basic necessities like food and water. We will also check to make sure the [vessels] are not letting in water,” he said.
While it is unclear whether the boats are in Malaysian or Thai waters, Mr Tan said the decision to send out the plane had been made by the Malaysian authorities, and they were not working in conjunction with Thailand on the matter.
Mr Tan said Malaysia’s policy remained that people should not be allowed to land on Malaysian shores unless the vessels were leaking water or in danger of sinking. ...
"If a boat is unseaworthy, that is a [potential] disaster," said Mr Tan. “These people are human beings and we have got to treat them humanely and assess the situation."°
Zeit Online: Gefangen auf dem Meer In Südostasien treiben Tausende Flüchtlinge ohne Wasser und Nahrung auf hoher See. Keiner will sie aufnehmen. Mit einem Mobiltelefon rufen sie um Hilfe. von Mathias Peer, Bangkok - ein wirklich guter Artikel und in den Kommentaren pedigiert die Hirnschmelze, unfaßlich.
Philippine Daily Inquirer: Wandering nations
°This is a humanitarian crisis, not unlike the unabated flow of refugees fleeing Libya and Syria, who attempt to cross the Mediterranean on frail boats to reach Europe. The Rohingya come from Myanmar, an Asean member-state, and are preyed upon by human smuggling syndicates based in Thailand, another Asean member-state. All they ask is to be allowed to start a new life in any country that would take them, and give them work, free from fear and harassment. Asean cannot treat the Rohingya as though they were the sole responsibility of the country into which the sea current and the wind happened to deposit them.
All this seems far removed from our everyday concerns as Filipinos, though we may be part of Asean. Indeed, a glance at the map would show that the probability of Rohingya boats washing ashore on a Philippine beach is pretty low. But this is precisely what makes the moral imperative more salient—that we are able to see ourselves as being part of the solution even when the problem is not immediately at our door.
In this regard, it is worth asking: How many of us are prepared to welcome the Rohingya into our communities? Not many, I suspect. While we did open our doors to war refugees from South Vietnam in the 1970s, they did not exactly live among us. They stayed in camps in Bataan and Palawan where they basically waited and prepared for eventual resettlement in the United States.
In truth, it’s not an easy question to answer. There’s a new type of racism that is thriving everywhere in the modern world. No longer anchored on a belief in the hierarchy of races, it manifests itself as a belief in cultural essentialism. It is often subtly expressed as the need to preserve cultural integrity in a pluralist world, though its ultimate aim is clearly to exclude the “other.” Anti-immigrant Europe is a good example of this. And indeed, overseas Filipino workers often find themselves at the receiving end of this sentiment.
The more globalized societies become, the more people begin to think their nationhood is threatened. Unable to tap the sources of modern solidarity, they ironically turn to ethnicity, and sometimes to religion, in a frantic effort to recover and defend their imagined purity and wholeness. I dare say we are probably no different.°
man kann es auch so sehen wie der blog bei International Business Time
autor gianluca mezzofiore hat den drohenden hungertod der rohingya thematisiert
Malaysia hat laut YahooNews/AP zwei weitere Boote mit insgesamt 800 Rohingya abgewiesen °saying it could not afford to keep being nice. ...
Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi said about 500 people on board a boat found Wednesday off the coast of northern Penang state — three days after more than a thousand refugees landed on nearby Langkawi island — were given provisions and then sent on their way.
"What do you expect us to do?" he said. "We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border. We have treated them humanely but they cannot be flooding our shores like this."
"We have to send the right message that they are not welcome here," he said.
Another boat carrying about 300 migrants was turned away near Langkawi Island overnight, according to two Malaysian officials who declined to be identified because they weren't authorized to speak to the press.°
Human Rights Watch heute: Southeast Asia: End Rohingya Boat Pushbacks
°For several years, people smugglers have been transporting ethnic Rohingya from western Burma’s Arakan State, and an increasing number of Bangladeshis, by boat to Thai shores, where they are moved overland and then held in jungle camps for ransom. Those able to pay the 60,000 to 70,000 baht (US$1800 to 2100) ransom were released and transported to Malaysia, while those unable to pay were held and allegedly abused.
On May 1, a Thai government raid on a jungle camp in Sadao district on the Thai-Malaysia border uncovered 26 bodies, sparking a larger Thai government crackdown on networks smuggling Rohingya and Bangladeshis in Thailand. Since then, Thai military and police officials have found more such camps and exhumed more bodies, and as camp guards have fled, more than 250 survivors have escaped the camps and been detained by the authorities. The crackdown effectively closed the smuggling route through Thailand, leaving boats in transit with Rohingya and Bangladeshis unable to land their human cargo. As a result, smugglers have sought to offload these people in Malaysia or Indonesia, or abandoned their boats and left them to drift. Thai authorities at the most senior levels have long known about these smuggling rings and turned a blind eye.
“The Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian navies should stop playing a three-way game of human ping pong, and instead should work together to rescue all those on these ill-fated boats,” Robertson said. “The world will judge these governments by how they treat these most vulnerable men, women, and children.”
The Rohingya are fleeing systematic rights violations by the Burmese government, which effectively prevents them from obtaining citizenship under the discriminatory 1982 Citizenship Law. In October 2012, the Rohingya were subject to attacks across Arakan State that Human Rights Watch determined constituted ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The government has not held anyone accountable for the violence, which destroyed thousands of Rohingya homes and caused massive displacement. More than 130,000 Rohingya have been confined to internally displaced persons camps with little freedom of movement to pursue livelihoods, and a lack of access to adequate food, health care, and education.
On April 1, 2015, the government formally rescinded the temporary ID cards, or “white cards,” that were the last form of official government identification extended to stateless Rohingya, and stripped them of voting rights, which had been linked to the ID cards.°
Die Zusammenfassung für die Presse und der Human-Rights-Watch-Report über die ethnischen Säuberungen in Rakhine in der 2. Jahreshälfte 2012 mit Satellitenaufnahmen von ... 5 der 13 seit Juni betroffenen Siedlungen. Diese zeigen 27 verwüstete Gebiete sowie die Zerstörung von 4862 Gebäuden auf 348 Hektar Land ...
Der blutigste Vorfall ereignete sich am 23. Oktober, als bei einem 24-stündigen Massaker in Yan Thei in der Siedlung Mrauk-U mindestens 70 Rohingya getötet wurden. Obwohl die Sicherheitsbehörden vorgewarnt wurden, waren während des Angriffs nur wenige Bereitschaftspolizisten, örtliche Polizisten und Soldaten anwesend, um für Sicherheit zu sorgen. Anstatt einzugreifen, nahmen sie Angehörigen der Rohingya Stöcke und andere rudimentäre Waffen ab, die sie zur Verteidigung trugen. Zu den Todesopfern gehörten auch 28 Kinder, die durch Hiebe mit Stich- und Schnittwaffen getötet wurden, darunter 13 Kinder unter 5 Jahren. „Erst sagten uns die Soldaten, ‚tut einfach nichts, wir werden euch beschützen, wir werden euch retten‘. Also vertrauten wir ihnen“, so ein 25-jähriger Überlebender gegenüber Human Rights Watch. „Doch dann brachen sie ihr Versprechen. Die Arakanesen hatten es leicht, uns zu schlagen und zu töten. Die Sicherheitskräfte beschützten uns nicht vor ihnen.“
„Als arakanesische Mobs im Oktober muslimische Siedlungen angriffen, sahen die Sicherheitskräfte entweder weg, oder nahmen an Gewalt und Brandstiftung teil“, so Robertson. „Sechs Monate später macht die Regierung immer noch ‚gesellschaftliche Unruhen‘ für das Blutvergießen und die Zerstörung verantwortlich, obwohl sie informiert war, was tatsächlich passierte und es hätte stoppen können.“
Die Angriffe im Oktober erfolgten nach erheblichen organisatorischen Vorbereitungen auf lokaler Ebene. Die beiden Hauptakteure bei der Organisation der Anti-Rohingya-Kampagnen waren der örtliche buddhistische Mönchsorden (sangha) und die Rakhine Nationalities Development Partei (RNDP), die im Jahr 2010 von arakanesischen Nationalisten gegründet wurde und in der Region großen Zuspruch genießt. Zwischen Juni und Oktober veröffentlichten diese und andere Gruppen eine Vielzahl von rohingyafeindlichen Broschüren und Stellungnahmen, die explizit oder implizit die Existenz der Rohingya- als Bevölkerungsgruppe bestritten, ihre Angehörigen dämonisierte und ihre Vertreibung forderte. Dabei wurde teilweise auch der Begriff der ‚ethnischen Säuberung‘ verwendet. Die Stellungnahmen wurden häufig in Zusammenhang mit geplanten Treffen veröffentlicht. Obwohl sie für die kommunalen und nationalen Behörden leicht wahrnehmbar gewesen wäre, äußerten diese keine Bedenken. Die Lokalbehörden sowie Politiker und Mönche wirkten zudem – etwa öffentliche Aussagen oder direkten Zwang – darauf hin, Muslimen ihr Recht auf Bewegungsfreiheit zu nehmen, ihre Möglichkeiten zum Verdienst des Lebensunterhaltes zu beschneiden und den Zugang zu Märkten und humanitärer Hilfe zu verhindern. Ihr offensichtliches Ziel war es, Muslime zur Aufgabe ihrer Häuser und zum Verlassen der Region zu zwingen.°
Vielen Dank an @alle für die vielen Quellen, hab' die Infokästen entsprechend erweitert und ergänzt und mache das auch weiterhin, ohne es jeweils extra zu erwähnen.
New York Times Crisis at Sea
°One of the world’s most beautiful regions, the seas of Southeast Asia — home to sparkling white beaches and $7,000-a-night beach villas — is becoming a scene of a mass atrocity.
Thousands of refugees from the persecuted Rohingya minority in Myanmar, fleeing modern concentration camps at home, have fled to sea in boats, and many have drowned. Fearing a crackdown, smugglers have abandoned some of those boats at sea, and neighboring countries are pushing the boats back to sea when they try to land.
The Obama administration, which has regarded Myanmar as one of its diplomatic successes, is largely unhelpful as this calamity unfolds.
One appalling chapter of World War II came when the SS St. Louis left Germany in 1939 full of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Cuba and the United States barred them from disembarking, and — after passing so close to Miami that passengers could see the lights on shore — the ship returned to Europe, where many died in the Holocaust.
Now refugees fleeing concentration camps are again denied landfall.°
Malay Mail Stop opressing Rohinya minority, says Malaysia to Myanmar
°Southeast Asia must send a “very strong message” to Myanmar to stop oppressing its Rohingya minority, who are part of a surge in boat people raising fears of a regional humanitarian crisis, a Malaysian government official said today.
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said Southeast Asia's growing refugee problem was due in large part to Myanmar's treatment of Rohingya, a Muslim minority that faces state discrimination and has been targeted in recent sectarian violence.
“Of course, there is a problem back home in Myanmar with the way they treat the Rohingya people,” Wan Junaidi told AFP.
“So that is why we need to send a very strong message to Myanmar that they need to treat their people with humanity. They need to be treated like humans, and cannot be so oppressive.” ...
Migrants groups warn that repelling boats could amount to a death sentence for people already at risk from starvation and disease after long weeks at sea, with recent arrivals saying many of their fellow passengers had died on the sea passage, their bodies thrown overboard. ...
“We cannot keep being the only ones responsible for taking them in,” Wan Junaidi said.
He expects the issue to be taken up this year in further meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Malaysia is this year's chair of Asean ― which also includes Myanmar.
Asean members are forbidden from interfering in each other's internal affairs, but Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman said recently the Rohingya problem was becoming an “international” one that needed to be discussed.°
Schön ordentlich gegliedert bei ABC-News: How Southeast Asia has created its own humanitarian crisis
°MYANMAR
The crisis stems from Myanmar's decades-long persecution of its 1.3 million Rohingya, a Muslim minority who are denied citizenship by law, meaning they are effectively stateless. Rohingya have endured violence at the hands of the military and extremist Buddhists, who in the last three years chased tens of thousands of people from their homes in the western state of Rakhine.
The Rohingya have limited access to education and medical care. They cannot move around or practice their religion freely. The government refuses to recognize them, even by name, saying they are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh even though many of their families arrived generations ago.
The Rohingya have been fleeing Myanmar by boat for years, but threats of deportations and lingering questions about citizenship have sparked one of the biggest exoduses the region has seen. ... Even two Muslim-majority countries willing to quietly accept them in the past are now pushing them away.
___
THAILAND
Thailand has been at the center of Southeast Asia's human trafficking industry for years. Syndicates have used the country as a transit stop to offload migrants at hidden jungle camps before moving them onto third countries, including neighboring Malaysia. The industry thrived thanks to corrupt officials who turned a blind eye for pay.
But on May 1, things started to change. Thai authorities found more than 30 corpses buried at the traffickers' abandoned jungle camps bordering Malaysia and launched the crackdown. A flurry of arrests sounded an alarm to traffickers, who promptly abandoned their ships and left their human cargoes at sea without fuel, food and clean water.
Thailand says it cannot solve the problem alone. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha reiterated Tuesday what has become his mantra: "Thailand is a transit country. Their destination is not Thailand, so this has to be solved by other countries." Thailand will host a one-day meeting on "irregular migration in the Indian Ocean" with representatives from 15 affected countries - but not until the end of May.
___
INDONESIA
Boats with nearly 600 Rohingya and Bangladeshis washed ashore on Sunday in Aceh, in western Indonesia, and those on board were given medical care and shelter. But a day later, the Indonesian navy stopped another boat from entering the county's waters. It turned back the boat, crammed with hundreds of hungry migrants, saying it gave the passengers food, water and directions to Malaysia - their original destination.
In the past, Indonesia has been fairly welcoming to Rohingya who have reached the country, many of them by accident after their boats failed to land in Malaysia. Many Indonesians in the mostly Muslim country have sympathized with their plight, staging protests to condemn Rohingya persecution in Myanmar. The former president and foreign minister also openly pushed the Myanmar government to stop discriminating against the Rohingya.
___
MALAYSIA
More than 1,000 migrants came ashore on Malaysia's Langkawi Island in recent days, but the country has bluntly said it will turn away any more of the crowded vessels unless they are sinking.
"We won't let any foreign boats come in," Tan Kok Kwee, first admiral of Malaysia's maritime enforcement agency, said Tuesday. In a policy that appears to echo Indonesia's, he said that boats deemed seaworthy would be given provisions and sent away. If the boat is sinking, they would rescue it, he said.
Although the Rohingya are Muslims, the overwhelmingly Muslim countries of Indonesia and Malaysia appear to be putting their national interests ahead of religious solidarity with actions that send the message - it is not in their interest to welcome this potentially massive wave of boat people.
Malaysia is host to more than 150,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mostly from Myanmar. More than 45,000 of them are Rohingyas, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
___
ASEAN
Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet twice a year with the aim of increasing cooperation and improving the lives of their citizens but critics say the group's biggest flaw is that it never tackles contentious issues. ASEAN's bedrock principle is not interfering in each other's internal affairs - a loophole that critics say helps member states commit abuses without consequence. When Myanmar held the group's rotating chairmanship in 2014 it blocked any discussion of the Rohingya issue, and did so again when ASEAN leaders met last month in Langkawi, which is ironically the location where some of the ships washed ashore this week.
___
UNITED NATIONS
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said Thursday it is "extremely alarmed" at reports that Indonesia and Malaysia are pushing boats back to sea. Volker Turk, the agency's assistant high commissioner for protection, said that "instead of competing to avoid responsibility" the governments of Southeast Asia should approach the crisis as an urgent matter of regional concern. The UNHCR has urged countries to prioritize saving lives and then figure out government policy. The agency itself has no mandate to carry out its own rescue mission but is working with governments and agencies "to channel information to the right people who can do something about it," said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman in Bangkok.
___
UNITED STATES
The U.S. has been a key international player in pushing for an end to the region's trafficking problems. U.S. Embassy of Thailand spokeswoman Melissa Sweeney said Wednesday that Washington was "following the situation closely" and was "concerned" by reports of thousands of stranded migrants who may need help. American officials are in contact with affected governments and U.N. agencies, Sweeney said, without elaborating.
Last June, the U.S. blacklisted Thailand and Malaysia for failing to meet minimum requirements in fighting human trafficking. It downgraded the two countries to the lowest level -"tier 3" - in the annual U.S. rankings of governments' anti-trafficking efforts. Its new report is due out this June.°
The Australian Rohingya crisis
°Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have not responded to Tuesday’s appeal by the UN refugee agency for a coordinated search and rescue campaign to find the dozens of boats, large and small, believed to be stranded in the Andaman Sea and Malacca Strait. ...
The International Organisation for Migration is understood to be privately pressing the governments to act, as is the US Government State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said overnight the US was supporting the efforts of UNHCR and IOM and is “committed to working with governments in the region who are dealing with the brunt of this burden”.
There has been no response from Canberra however, although Australia is co-founder of the Bali Process for regional cooperation on people trafficking and associated crimes.
Asked about the Indonesian Navy’s turnback of a boat carrying more than 400 people on Monday, a spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said only: “These are matters for the Indonesian government.”
Attorney-General George Brandis said Australia had committed $10.7 billion to urgent humanitarian assistance for people in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, including many Rohingya.
“This is a regional issue demanding a regional response,” Senator Brandis told parliament.
“The Foreign Minister has had talks with regional governments about the need to find a solution for managing the challenge of large-scale movement of people from Myanmar and the Foreign Minister raised the matter in Thailand last week.
“The Abbott government welcomes the Thai government’s plan to hold a regional officials meeting to address the situation. Australia will attend that officials’ level meeting.”
Senator Brandis said Australia had “not been approached directly for assistance” by Indonesia, Malaysia, the IOM or UNHCR.°
The Malaysian Insider Asean’s Rohingya left to die – Charles Santiago
°Asean shamelessly calls itself a people-centred bloc. And goes on to self-style, the 10 nation states, as a caring and sharing group. ...
Thailand has indicated it will provide shelter to the fleeing refugees. Both Malaysia and Indonesia, in sharp contrast, have said they will send the boats back.
This is simply inhumane and atrocious. NGOs monitoring the Rohingya boat people say close to 8,000 more are still drifting in sea.
So instead of mouthing about a caring society, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand must send its navy to rescue the Rohingya and Bangladeshis who are at sea.
If the three countries fail to do so now, we will have a human catastrophe in our hands. ...
The world is now looking at Southeast Asia and demanding some form of accountability.
Therefore pussy-footing further on this issue or hiding under the archaic cloak of the non-interference policy will not work anymore.
Asean is already lagging behind- the heads of states should have ironed out the thorny issue of the mass exodus of the Rohingya, which escalated further in June 2012 following state-sponsored violence, at the recently-concluded Asean summit.
They failed to discuss about this crucial issue as it would entail looking at Burma's gross human rights violations against the Rohingya.
Malaysia, after being instrumental in bringing Myanmar into the Asean fold, now says it will send the thousands of Rohingya back as they are illegal immigrants.
Let's get the facts straight here. They are refugees fleeing state-engineered violence. The Rohingya are stateless in their home country and victims of targeted killings.
And so as Chair of Asean, Malaysia must protect the Rohingya as opposed to sending them back to Burma to face persecution and death.
Malaysia's foreign policy must be consistent. And as such, support for Palestine and Syria must also be extended to the Rohingya.°
Daily Star (Libanon) Migrant boat found in Thai waters: AFP reporter
°KOH LIPE, Thailand: A boat crammed with scores of Rohingya migrants - including many young children- was found drifting in Thai waters Thursday, according to an AFP reporter at the scene, with passengers saying several people had died over the last few days.
Dozens of visibly weak-looking people were on the deck of the stricken vessel, which was found apparently adrift several kilometers off the southern Thai island of Koh Lipe, in the Andaman Sea.
"About 10 people died during the journey. We threw their bodies into the water," one migrant shouted in Rohingya to a boat carrying reporters.
"There are 300 of us.... we have been at sea for two months. We want to go to Malaysia but we have not reached there yet."
A group of women wearing headscarves huddled on the deck cried as reporters approached, the AFP reporter said, adding many of the passengers were young children, some seemingly toddlers.
The words "We are Myanmar Rohingya" were daubed in English on a black flag tethered to the wooden boat, while a large tarpaulin had been erected to protect the stricken and weak migrants from the sun.
Many of the male migrants were topless and wearing only stained longyis.
There was no immediate sign of Thai authorities who have apparently been scouring the area for a number of vessels laden with migrants adrift in the area.°
Von wegen *no sign of Thai authorities*...
Asian Correspondent Thailand to prosecute Rohingya migrants; new boat found off Koh Lipe
°Thailand says it will prosecute nearly 200 Rohingya migrants rounded up in a recent human trafficking crackdown in the south of the country.
The news came as a boat carrying scores of migrants was discovered in Thai waters Thursday afternoon off the southern island of Koh Lipe. Early reports suggested that as many as 350 people on the boat were being kept alive by food and water passed to them from fishing boats.°
BBC Stranded Myanmar Rohingya boat migrants desperate
°The BBC's Jonathan Head reports from alongside the vessel off the southern coast of Thailand that it is a "desperate sight".
He said: "People are calling out to us begging us for food and water.
"There are a lot of women and children on board. This is a very old-looking fishing boat that's completely packed with people.
"We can see there are actually people drinking their own urine from bottles. We've been throwing them bottles of water - everything we've got on board."
He said blankets had been tied up to try and provide some shelter from the sun. The average maximum temperature is 34C.
People on board have said the trawler was abandoned by its crew and left anchored near the Thai-Malaysian border.
On Wednesday night Thai fishing boats found the boat and it was towed into Malaysian waters.
It was then towed back to Thai waters and is awaiting the arrival of the Thai navy, our correspondent reports.(die offenbar, s.o., schon da ist und die Flüchtlinge der angekündigten Strafverfolgung zuführt)
The migrants - including 50 women and 84 children - have been at sea for two months, but their situation only became critical once their crew abandoned the boat and left them without a working engine°
Um die Situation der burmesischen Rohingya im Ansatz nachvollziehen zu können, ein paar Gedanken über Staatenlosigkeit:
Artikel 15 AEMR: Jeder Mensch hat Anspruch auf eine Staatsangehörigkeit.
Niemand darf seine Staatsangehörigkeit willkürlich entzogen noch ihm das Recht versagt werden, seine Staatsangehörigkeit zu wechseln.
Genau das ist den Rohingya ab den 1990er Jahren angetan worden, ihnen wurde willkürlich ihre Staatsangehörigkeit und immer mehr Rechte entzogen.
Die Konsequenzen in Myanmar heute:
- keine Reise- und Bewegungsfreiheit
- kein freier Zugang zu Bildung
- kaum Zugang zu medizinischer Versorgung
- keine staatliche Anerkennung von Ehen
- Vererbung der Staatenlosigkeit an die Kinder
- keine selbstbestimmte Familienplanung (2-Kind-Gesetz)
- keine Geschäftsfähigkeit, kein Konto, kein gar nichts
- kein Schutz des Staates vor den Pogromen der Faschisten der 969-Bewegung ab Juni 2012, sondern im Gegenteil staatliches Wegsehen bis Mitmachen, nach den Pogromen Internierung von Hunderttausenden in Lagern, die von der NYT als Konzentrationslager beschrieben werden
- kein Wahlrecht
- kein Recht, ihren Grund zu besitzen
- kein Recht, Rechte zu haben oder gar einzuklagen
Hannah Arendt, selbst staatenlos zwischen 1937 und 1951, schreibt in diesem Zusammenhang:
°Daß es so etwas gibt wie ein Recht, Rechte zu haben - und dies ist gleichbedeutend damit, in einem Beziehungssystem zu leben, in dem man aufgrund von Handlungen und Meinungen beurteilt wird -, wissen wir erst, seitdem Millionen von Menschen aufgetaucht sind, die dieses Recht verloren haben und zufolge der neuen globalen Organisation der Welt nicht imstande sind, es wiederzugewinnen.°
Über in den USA gestrandete staatenlose jüdische Flüchtlinge:
°Die Unbeliebtheit der Flüchtlinge hat wenig mit ihrem Verhalten und viel mit dem zweideutigen legalen Status zu tun, unter dem sie, aber nicht nur sie leiden. Sie kommen aus dem Niemandsland, denn sie können weder ausgewiesen noch deportiert werden. Keine Gegenseitigkeitsverträge, die ihre Gültigkeit zwischen den Nationen auch im Kriege beibehalten, schützen sie oder das Land, in welches sie kommen. Weil sie außerhalb der Gesetze der Nationalstaaten, die Staatenlose nur als einen negativen Grenz- und Ausnahmefall kennen, stehen, gefährden sie die normale Gesetzlichkeit jedes Landes, welches sie aufnimmt. Niemand weiß recht, was man mit ihnen anfangen soll, wenn die Barmherzigkeit erst einmal zu ihrem Recht und zu ihrem notwendigen Ende gekommen ist.°
Auf die aktuelle Situation der 6-8000 Rohingya in der Straße von Malakka paßt besser (aus Das Totenschiff von B.Traven):
°Das feste Land ist mit einer unübersehbaren Mauer umgeben, ein Zuchthaus für die, die drinnen sind, ein Totenschiff oder eine Fremdenlegion für die, die draußen sind. Es ist die einzige Freiheit, die ein Staat, der sich zum Extrem seines Sinns entwickeln will und muss, dem einzelnen Menschen, der nummeriert werden kann, zu bieten vermag, wenn er ihn nicht mit kühler Geste ermorden will. Zu dieser kühlen Geste wird der Staat noch kommen müssen°
Zu dieser kühlen Geste kommen in diesem Moment die drei stärksten Wirtschaftsmächte des Asean-Bundes: Thailand, Indonesien, Malaysia, indem die wegen der Razzien gegen Menschenhändler in Thailand von den Schleppern im Stich gelassenen Boote von Hoheitsgebiet zu Hoheitsgebiet geschleppt werden und zwar ohne Nahrung, Wasser, Treibstoff.
Und jetzt kann jeder mal den eigenen Personalausweis aus der Tasche kramen, zärtlich streicheln und scheißdankbar dafür sein, aus reinem purem unverdientem Glück in einem reichen Staat mit einem an die AEMR gebundenen Grundgesetz geboren zu sein und ein Recht zum Rechtehaben zu besitzen.
Rund 12 Millionen Menschen weltweit teilen dieses Glück nicht.
New York Times Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman Sea
°The green and red fishing boat, packed with men, women and children squatting on the deck with only tarps strung up to protect them from the sun, was turned away by the Malaysian authorities on Wednesday, the passengers said.
The passengers said 400 migrants were aboard the boat, which was north of the Malaysian island of Langkawi and west of the Thai mainland. At least 160 people were visible above deck. ...
The passengers said that they had been on the boat for three months, that 10 of them had died during the voyage and that their bodies had been thrown overboard. They said that the boat’s captain and five crew members had abandoned them six days ago. ...
On Thursday afternoon, a Thai Navy speedboat arrived near the migrant boat in the Andaman Sea, having been alerted to its presence by The New York Times.
The navy vessel stayed about 100 yards away from the migrant boat, and Thai sailors appeared to be observing it, but they did not board it or send it away. At one point they tossed packages of instant noodles to the boat, but it was not clear that the migrants had any means to cook them.
“We want to watch them from afar,” said Lt. Cmdr. Veerapong Nakprasit, who was on the Thai Navy boat. “We will help them fix their engine. Their intention is to go to Malaysia. They have entered illegally.”
Chris Lewa, the coordinator of the Arakan Project, which monitors trafficking in the Andaman Sea, had been in sporadic contact with the boat for the past several days. The passengers, who shared one mobile phone, told her that they had no water and food and requested help.
Ms. Lewa said families of the passengers told her the boat left waters off Myanmar around March 1. The passengers paid or agreed to pay to be taken to Malaysia, she said, and other vessels linked to the traffickers had delivered food and water to the boat during the journey until the crew abandoned it.
She said that the passengers on board had given differing accounts of how many people died during the voyage. “It’s always difficult to get the true story,” she said. “They are so traumatized.”
The Times obtained the number of the mobile phone from Ms. Lewa and requested information on the location of the phone from the Thai service provider, DTAC, a subsidiary of a Norwegian telecommunications company. The company initially declined, citing privacy concerns.
The Times then gave the number to Commander Veerapong, the navy officer, and asked that he make the same request. An hour later, on Thursday morning, the company provided the location of the cellular transmission tower that had handled the last call made from the phone.°
Guardian Migrant crisis grips south-east Asia as countries play human ping-pong
°But this week’s callous move by Malaysian patrol ships to turn back two boats carrying about 600 people, many in critical physical condition, and similarly unconscionable, coordinated actions by Thailand and Indonesia may soon shift attention to one of the world’s other big migration crises.
After a government decision to close Malaysian ports, officials confirmed on Thursday that the two refugee boats had been intercepted off Langkawi and Penang islands, on Malaysia’s western littoral, and forced back out to sea.
It is believed one of these boats was later found drifting in Thai waters, where authorities have also made its occupants unwelcome. According to a banner written in English, the boat mostly contained members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
“About 10 people died during the journey. We threw their bodies into the water,” one migrant shouted in Rohingya, according to local reporters. “We have been at sea for two months. We want to go to Malaysia.”
Many young children were among the weak-looking passengers on the boat. Aid workers estimate up to 6,000 migrants may be at sea with nowhere to go, while the UN refugee agency says the deliberate refusal to help them and others could quickly lead to a “massive humanitarian disaster”.
Human rights groups say the migrants are at risk of starvation, dehydration and illness – and that their situation will only worsen while irresponsible regional governments, eschewing search-and-rescue operations, try instead to make them somebody’s else’s problem.°
Khaosod English: Thai Govt: Ship of Abandoned Myanmar Migrants Will Not Land in Thailand
°Maj.Gen. Sansern Kaewkamnerd, a spokesperson of the Thai military government ...
"Once ships from the Third Region Navy inspected the boat and asked about the refugees’ intentions, we discovered that none of them intended to land on the Thai coast," Maj.Gen. Sansern said. "I expect that the repair of the refugee boat's engine will be completed tonight. They will be able to continue their journey as they wish."
He continued, "We have given the Navy clear policy that if refugees intend to land on the Thai coast, they are welcome to do so, and we will give them humanitarian assistance, but we will treat them in accordance with laws about illegal entry into the country."°
BBC Why has Rohingyas crisis blown up?
°"There is only one reason," Bangkok-based Rohingya expert Chris Lewa told the BBC. "Muslims in Burma's in westernmost state of Rakhine face such extreme oppression that they feel they have no option but to leave - in many cases by any means necessary."
The discrimination goes back to Burma's independence from Britain, correspondents say, but is especially pervasive in Rakhine where about one million Rohingyas say they have faced intense hostility from the Buddhist majority.
They say that they are victims of an official policy of segregation which has forced them to the margins of an already poor region.
Successive Myanmar governments - including the more reform minded ones of recent years - argue that Rohingyas are not a genuine ethnic group and in reality are Bengali migrants who are a divisive left-over from colonial times.
In the last three years, more than 120,000 Rohingyas have boarded ships to flee to other countries, according to the UN refugee agency.
Because many have been unable to find a country willing to take them in, they have in effect been "ping-ponged" around South-East Asia without ever finding a permanent home.°
New Zealand Herald Sea of blame, no haven for Asia's migrants
Interessantes Detail: °In the past, Indonesia has been fairly welcoming to Rohingya who have reached the country, many of them by accident after their boats failed to land in Malaysia.
Many Indonesians in the mostly Muslim country have sympathised with their plight, staging protests to condemn Rohingya persecution in Burma. The former president and foreign minister also openly pushed Burma to stop discriminating against the Rohingya.°
The Nation (Thailand) A regional crisis with roots in Myanmar
°Thailand must act urgently to combat the trafficking of people along its coastline, but only Nay Pyi Taw has the power to end refugees' misery
As many as 8,000 Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis seeking better lives elsewhere are stranded in boats in the Andaman Ocean and Malacca Straits.
Worse, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are refusing to take them in, and are instead pushing them back to the ocean, where starvation and possibly death await.
In 2009 Thailand came under close scrutiny for towing out to sea a boat carrying 300 Rohingya seeking to land on our shores. About 100 were later rescued at sea; the rest remain unaccounted for.
To this day the governments of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia feel no shame in maintaining such cold-hearted policies.
In 2009 Thai officials were keen to dismiss the boats packed with Rohingya as a one-off occurrence, but in fact that was only the start of a major wave of human trafficking in which Thailand's southernmost provinces have become transit points.
After the discovery in the far South of scores of shallow graves containing the remains of suspected migrants - some of which are just stone's throw away from military and police outposts - the region's governments are belatedly coming together to seek solutions.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is finally pushing for Myanmar to engage in talks with Thailand and Malaysia over this problem. The roots of this crisis lie in the persecution of the Rohingya, which began with their being stripped of citizenship by Burma in the early 1980s.
It is not yet clear whether Thailand or other regional governments have the courage to tell Myanmar's quasi-military rulers that their policy is hurting neighbouring countries.
In the meantime Thailand is mulling temporary camps for Rohingya and other illegal migrants. The idea is long overdue and could do much to curb the scourge of people-trafficking. Better yet, Thailand should invite the United Nations refugee agency and international NGOs to assist in running the shelters to ensure transparency and accountability.
The alternative for Thailand and its neighbours is to carry on with business as usual, in which case the problem will only get worse. As things stand, Thailand's reputation on human trafficking is already at low ebb.
While Thai authorities prefer to view the Rohingya as illegal aliens, the international community sees them as a stateless people vulnerable to near-slavery in certain business sectors such as the Thai fishing industry.
Rohingya are traded from Myanmar and shipped by boat to the Thai shore, then moved to scores of secret holding centres scattered in woods along the Malaysian border. There they wait to cross into Malaysia, where they have been promised work and better lives.
Each stage of their transit costs more money, and if they can't make the payments, they get sold to toil on fishing trawlers. Female victims have recounted being sold to brothels.
Sadly, Thai authorities have played a role in this heartless cycle. After making arrests in response to news reports or pressure from rights groups, corrupt officials have reportedly sold "rescued" migrants back to the traffickers.
Some observers suggest we crack down on these migrants by charging them with illegal entry, but any such legal means ignore the humanitarian nature of this problem, which is rooted in Myanmar's refusal to grant citizenship to the Muslim Rohingya - despite their having lived in the country for generations.
Moreover, Thailand's immigration detention facilities have capacity for a relatively small number of people and would be overwhelmed by the thousands of refugees now on the move.
We could forcibly repatriate these migrants back to Myanmar, but that would be a gross violation of international norms.
Though it might upset those Thais who hold xenophobic attitudes towards the migrants, setting up camps and permitting outside help is morally the right thing to do. It's also the most practical option to stem the damage being done to the country's reputation.
But temporary shelters can only be a stopgap measure. Myanmar's leadership must be made to realise that the actions it takes now in dealing with the Rohingya will define how the world perceives our countries for years to come.°
New York Times Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman Sea
Interessante Zahlen:
°It was unclear Thursday whether they would receive that help, however, despite the presence of a Thai Navy vessel, which arrived after being alerted to the boat’s presence by The New York Times.
Instead, the presence of an estimated 6,000 to 20,000 migrants at sea, fleeing ethnic persecution in Myanmar and poverty in Bangladesh, has created a crisis across the region with countries pointing fingers at one another and declining to take responsibility themselves.
Most of the migrants were thought to be headed to Malaysia, but after more than 1,500 came ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia in the past week, both countries declared their intention to turn away any more boats carrying migrants.
Thai officials have not articulated an official policy since the crisis began, beyond convening a regional conference to discuss the problem this month. Thailand is not known to have allowed any of the migrants to land there.
The Indonesian Navy turned away a boat with thousands of passengers on Tuesday, urging it on to Malaysia, while the Malaysian authorities turned away two boats with a total of at least 800 passengers on Wednesday.
The Thai naval vessel that approached the migrant ship here on Thursday kept its distance, its commander, Lt. Cmdr. Veerapong Nakprasit, saying the migrants had “entered illegally.”°
Thomas Fuller (Thailand-Korrespondent der NYT) auf Twitter.
Time 2014 The Rohingya, Burma's Forgotten Muslims by James Nachtwey
The Straits Time Roots of migrant problem lie in colonialism
°Thailand has few options. It faces being left in the lowest tier of the US State Department's influential annual "Trafficking in Persons" report due out next month, and a potential European Union ban on Thai seafood over slavery in the fishing industry.
The discovery of a human trafficking network that involves state officials and has, for years, preyed on migrants does Thailand's credibility little good.
"Countries of origin, transit and destination must work together... by addressing the root causes," its Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The issues have been complicated in modern times by nationalism and domestic politics.
Naypyitaw, for example, is unlikely to bring any breakthroughs to the meeting as it does not recognise the Rohingya as an official ethnic minority.
Bangladesh has been bitter about this. "Their policy is Burma for the Burmans. As simple as that," a senior Bangladeshi government official told The Straits Times on the phone from Dhaka, on condition of anonymity, using Myanmar's former name.
The Myanmar government and local Buddhist Rakhine view the Rohingya as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. They have been subjected to discrimination and violence that has driven over 100,000 into camps for the internally displaced. Previous waves have fled to Bangladesh, where well over 200,000 live in refugee camps.
But the real roots of the problem lie in colonialism. Migration between South Asia and South- east Asia has always been common; it was described by Dr Sunil Amrith in his 2013 book, Crossing The Bay Of Bengal, as "one of the largest movements of people in modern history".
"Until the 1930s, you had virtually nothing like migration control," Dr Amrith said in an interview from London, where he teaches modern Asian history at Birkbeck College.
"Then immigration controls became universal across Asia, and they were overlaid quite awkwardly on patterns of migration that far pre-dated the 20th century."
In colonial times, Bengal was partitioned first in 1905 and then in 1947. Meanwhile, Burma was ruled as a province of India by the British, but they agreed to rule it separately in 1937 - in effect, another partition. When colonialism ended and new borders were set, many people who had moved fluidly across regions found themselves accidental foreigners.
The Rohingya are the residue of this history. The region needs to develop ways to manage the undocumented migrants in a humane and constructive manner - and crack down on the criminal gangs that prey on them°
BenarNews Malaysia, Thailand Defend Decision to Stop More Migrants From Landing
°Activists and religious leaders in affected countries expressed outrage over the turning away of migrant boats.
“This is not pushing back, this is pushing to death,” said Nur Khan, director of Ain o Salish Kendra, a legal aid organization in Bangladesh.
“This situation must be treated from a human point of view. In the sea, innocent living people are adrift, exploited and betrayed by traffickers. Pushing them to their deaths by not giving any shelter is inhumane,” he told BenarNews.
Amidi Abdul Manan, president of the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, urged his government to act in concert with other Muslim countries to assist the migrants.
“Although they’ve been given food and drink on the boats, many of them are ill. They should be given treatment immediately, not just left there,” he said.
“If the cost of accommodating the refugees in question, Malaysia as a member of the OIC should use that connection and discuss addressing the needs of these refugees with other Islamic countries, he said, referring to the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“Islamic humanitarian measures are needed immediately,” he urged.
In Indonesia – which rescued 600 migrants off Aceh earlier in the week but later turned another boat away – the head of the Indonesian Ulema Council also called for a humanitarian response.
"We should help them not only for the sake of religion but for the sake of humanity, and that is according to the Islamic teaching. We must help,” Din Syamsuddin told BenarNews°
The Daily Beast ‘Pass the Trash’: The Tragic Truth About S.E. Asia's New Boat People
°“You can’t have these people float around until they die,” Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch tells The Daily Beast. “At this pace that could be a close-the-casket kind of meeting.” ...
Burma’s harsh treatment of the Rohingyas is the root of the problem, but Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have little appetite for absorbing thousands of refugees who might upset delicate balances at home and anger populations that see the migrants as interlopers likely to put pressure on state resources and take jobs away from locals.
“We don’t want them to come here,” Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Malaysia’s deputy home minister, said on Wednesday. Malaysia had been quietly accepting new Rohingya migrants, but the minister said the country will adopt tough measures, including turning back boats and deporting people in a bid to send the “right message.”
Analyst Kan Yuenyong tells The Daily Beast that Thailand’s “elite class” already has to deal with restive, Muslim-leaning southern provinces (Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala and Songkla) for which it has no adequate development or integration plan. The Rohingyas “could create some turbulence in society, and it’s not easy for Thailand to absorb these Muslim people,” says Kan, director of the Siam Intelligence Unit think tank.
Indonesia’s navy has turned away boats—one vessel reportedly contained 400 people—that reached the country’s shores. Officials gave migrants food and supplies—and directions to Malaysia. The Indonesian government, which has been highly critical of Australia’s “inhuman” decision to cut its intake of asylum seekers, apparently sees no hypocrisy in its own anti-refugee stance. ...
Robertson, the Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia, concedes that Thailand deserves credit for calling the meeting, but says the country and its neighbors must realize they can’t simply transfer Rohingyas to other jurisdictions and treat people as if they are just “passing the trash.”
“They need to end this pushback policy and work together,” he tells The Daily Beast. “They need to realize they have 5,000 to 10,000 people who need to be allowed humanitarian aid. They have to end this ‘beggar thy neighbor’ approach.” ...
“Burma has been solving this problem one boatload at a time,” Robertson says. That’s not exactly a recipe for a long-term solution°
SPON hat es jetzt, seit heute Abend auch auf dem Schirm: Asien macht Grenzen für Flüchtlinge dicht
Ebenso wie die taz.
AsiaOne: Slave trade booms in dark triangle
°Thailand is a strategic location for holding victims in remote mountains dotting that country's coast, said a Bangladeshi expatriate in Malaysia who turned broker.
"The migrants are confined in Thailand to realise the ransom before they are sent to Malaysia, because in the past some jobseekers fled from Thailand without paying. It is better to settle the business at the right time," he told this newspaper by phone on condition of anonymity.
...
According to the broker in Malaysia, traffickers' agents spread across Bangladesh get between Tk 5,000 (S$84) and 10,000 for each person supplied to the chain, and the godfathers in Cox's Bazar pocket between Tk 15,000 and 30,000.
The jobseekers are not released from the Thai jungles until their Thai captors get confirmation from the traffickers in Bangladesh that they received ransom from the victims' families. The amount varies, but it is usually between Tk 2 lakh (200,000; approx S$3390) and 3.5 lakh per victim.
...
some 4,000 people are trafficked every month or about 32,000 a year. And if Tk 2 lakh ransom were realised from each of them, the amount would stand at Tk 64 crore (640 million; approx S$10.8 million).
But not all the victims' families can pay ransom. The victims interviewed said some fail to arrange the money, and many of them are sold as slaves.
That people are sold as slaves in Thailand even to this day comes as no surprise. In 2013, the Guardian reported how the over 7-billion worth Thai seafood industry is built on slave labour, as âghost shipsâ reach the Thai shore along the Andaman Sea from northeastern direction (Bangladesh-Myanmar).
The British newspaper found one can get a slave for around £250 (S$519) in Thailand, while Reuters news agency put the price between US$155 (S$204) and US$1,550.°
BBC Indonesian fishermen tow migrant boat to Aceh
°More than 600 migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar stranded at sea have landed in Indonesia's Aceh province, after being rescued by local fishing boats.
...
Officials said 210 of those that landed in Aceh on Friday were from Myanmar and 395 from Bangladesh. Medical officials told BBC Indonesian service that eight on board were critically ill.
...
"According to initial information we got from them, they were pushed away by the Malaysian navy to the border of Indonesian waters," Sunarya, police chief in the city of Langsa where the migrants arrived, told AFP news agency.
He said their boat started sinking after reaching Indonesian territory but local fishermen ferried them to shore, adding they arrived at 5:00 am (22:00 GMT Thursday).
On Friday, a boat carrying about 300 Rohingya Muslims that was stranded off the southern coast of Thailand for a week was sent out of Thai waters.
...
"We fixed the engine and the boat left last night after 03:00," provincial governor Dejrat Limsiri told AFP news agency.
"We gave them ready-to-eat meals. They are now out of Thailand territory... They will try to go to Indonesia as it seems they cannot get to Malaysia," he said.
Lt Comm Veerapong Nakprasit of the Thai navy said those on board "did not want to come to Thailand so we gave them food, medicine, fuel and water".
"We did our humanitarian duty. They wanted to go to a third country," he told Reuters. "This is not a push back because these people wanted to go."°
CNN Migrant boat re-enters Malaysian waters after refusing offer to land: Thai officials
°"The Thais agreed to allow them to disembark, they said no," said Jeff Labovitz, Bangkok-based spokesman for the International Organization Migration (IOM), which is monitoring the unfolding crisis on Southeast Asian waters.
"That's really important -- the Thais did the right thing here."
Asked why those on board would have turned down the offer to leave the vessel, he said: "I have to assume they don't really understand what's going on."
Malaysia was the migrants' desired destination, he said, and it was also possible that trafficking brokers on board, concerned about avoiding Thai authorities, were calling the shots.
"Thailand is cracking down -- if you're a broker you're going to be interviewed and detained," he said.
As a consequence, he said, the "game of ping pong" involving the vessel and other migrant boats was set to continue. Earlier in the week, he said, Malaysian authorities had given the same boat food and water, before turning it around.°
Myanmar Times Can Myanmar, and the region, continue to ignore the crisis?
°Rights group estimate some 8000 impoverished Rohingya and Bengalis are adrift at sea, abandoned by those who smuggled them through international waters – and abandoned by the neighbouring nations that insist Myanmar bears responsibility for a problem it has long described as a domestic issue.
But with no one willing to allow the boats to disembark, observers say the region is facing the choice of leaving the thousands on the boats to their grim fate, or foregoing strict adherence to a longstanding policy of not meddling in each other’s affairs. For its part, Myanmar insists the boats are none of its concern.
Several migrants have already died in the face of regional indecision. Both Indonesia and Malaysia – which has long been a recipient of Muslims smuggled out of Rakhine – are now swatting the boats away, refusing to allow the sick and the starving to land.
“They are gambling with lives,” said U Maung Kyaw Nu, director of the Burmese Rohingya Association of Thailand.
...
“It’s clear there’s no regional task force that’s currently set up to handle this,” said Vivian Tan, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Bangkok.
“If authorities don’t step up and disembark … we don’t have the technical capacity to handle this. We cannot track and locate these boats.”
The spiralling humanitarian crisis took hold of the region after Thailand sought to repair a bruised reputation as a trafficking hub by cracking down on secluded smugglers’ camps, the destination for disembarking Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants.
But Thailand’s disruption of the route prompted smugglers to abandon their human cargo, and in recent days 2000 migrants have swum to shore or been rescued in Indonesia and Malaysia.
...
While many of those so far rescued say they are from Myanmar, Nay Pyi Taw denies it bears any responsibility.
President’s Office director U Zaw Htay said those who arrived in Indonesia and Malaysia “might not be from Myanmar”.
...
“Some of them have been living in Bangladesh but they are from Myanmar, they are Rohingya,” said Kharul, the political attaché at the Indonesian embassy in Yangon.
As chair of ASEAN this year, Malaysia was expected to bring the heated Rohingya topic to the table. Instead, the bloc’s members have so far adhered to a longstanding regional “non-interference” policy, including at recent meetings held on Langkawi, the holiday island that is now playing host to more than 1000 smuggled people who swam from their abandoned boat on May 10.
...
“By the time the Thai Prime Minister’s regional meeting rolls around on May 29 will there be any boat people left to save?” said Mr Robertson.
But while Myanmar officials are on the Thai prime minister’s invitee list, it’s unclear whether Nay Pyi Taw plans to attend.
Daw Khin Nwe Oo, a deputy director general at the Ministry of Labour, said Myanmar and Thai labour officials will meet on May 20, and based on the discussion Myanmar will decide whether to participate in the Thai summit.
Some observers say the government stands to gain internationally from participating in a regional solution, but fears a political backlash locally, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya.
“The Myanmar government is getting a bad reputation over staying silent on this issue,” said U Kyaw Lin Oo, a Myanmar-based regional affairs analyst. At the same time, he added, the government “will not want to disturb its local political landscape before an election”.°
New York Times (Update des gestrigen Artikels) Rohingya Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman Sea
°Interviews with passengers aboard a boat that washed ashore on the northern tip of Sumatra Island, Indonesia, on Sunday provided a glimpse of the brutal conditions they faced at sea and the desperation that drove them to make the risky voyage.
Passengers told of waiting on the boat for months before it sailed because the smugglers wanted to pack it as full as possible with paying passengers.
Most were forced to remain in the hold, squatting no more than an inch from the person in front of them. Every other day, they were fed bits of rice and noodles and small amounts of water. A hole in the floor, opening directly into the ocean, served as a toilet. ...
Seven days into the voyage, the ship’s Thai captain abruptly stopped the vessel at sea, they said. The next day, gunmen arrived on a speedboat, boarded the ship and robbed migrants of their valuables.
The captain and crew fled with the gunmen, abandoning the ship.
Mahammed Hashim, 25, a Rohingya from the Kyauktaw District in Rakhine State, said the risks of traveling in a rickety wooden ship with little food or water were less than those of remaining in Myanmar.
“We assumed that danger would come, but there was no other way,” he said. “We were living in a country that is more dangerous than the sea.”
They were lucky. A day later, the boat grounded in Indonesia, whose policy is not to turn back ships once they have made landfall.
The 584 passengers, including 59 children and 86 women, five of them pregnant, will have the opportunity to apply for refugee status with the United Nations refugee agency, a process that is expected to take months. For now, they are being housed at a government compound in Paya Bateung, in Aceh Province, where they sleep on concrete floors but have blankets, food and water.
The Rohingya, effectively stateless, have a reasonable chance at asylum. But the 208 Bangladeshis in the group will probably be considered economic migrants who, denied the right to work in Indonesia, will eventually choose to return home, Mr. Savage of the United Nations said.
Mahammed Jahangir Hussein, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi, said that was not an option. His father sold a house and farmland to raise the $3,250 he paid for the voyage and a promised job in Malaysia.
“If the Indonesian government says we cannot work, all the men here are saying, ‘Let’s work in another country,’ ” he said. “There’s nothing back home for us.”
Asked about his future, he waved his arms toward the migrants gathered around him and up at the scruffy concrete building he had just moved into.
“This is my future,” he said°
New York Times Boat With Hundreds of Migrants From Myanmar Heads Farther Out to Sea
°In a statement on Friday, the United Nations’ human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, rebuked Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia for turning back the vessels. “I am appalled at reports that Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have been pushing boats full of vulnerable migrants back out to sea, which will inevitably lead to many avoidable deaths,” he said. “The focus should be on saving lives not further endangering them.”
Mr. al-Hussein also emphasized Myanmar’s responsibility in the unfolding crisis, saying that until its government addressed “the institutional discrimination against the Rohingya population, including equal access to citizenship, this precarious migration will continue.”
The departure of the boat from Thailand’s waters came after the Thai authorities repaired its engine and provided food, water, batteries and enough fuel for 33 hours of travel, said Lt. Cmdr. Veerapong Nakprasit, the commander of a Thai naval base here.
...
The ship is without qualified crew; the captain and five other crew members abandoned the ship last week, according to passengers. But Commander Veerapong said the navy had trained the passengers “so they can reach their dream destination. We have verified that they can navigate on their own.”
He did not specify where the ship was headed. But the governor of Satun Province in Thailand, Dechrat Simsiri, said the passengers wanted to go to Malaysia. “They didn’t want to come to Thailand because we are in the middle of a heavy crackdown on human traffickers and they knew they would be arrested and sent back to Myanmar,” Mr. Simsiri said.
Several passengers also told reporters on Thursday that they had boarded the boat three months ago in the hope of reaching Malaysia. But they said the Malaysian authorities turned away their boat on Wednesday.
...
Thapanee Ietsrichai, a Thai reporter who witnessed the boat’s departure from Thai waters, confirmed that a man who was acting as the leader of the passengers and gave his name as Selim insisted to Thai sailors that they did not want to come ashore in Thailand and wanted to travel to Malaysia.
But Ms. Thapanee added that women on board were weeping as the boat departed. “They did not appear to want to leave,” she wrote in an Instagram posting. She said she and the Thai sailors “could not hold back their tears” as the ship moved farther out to sea.°
Guardian Rohingya migrants adrift in Andaman Sea – in pictures
The Conversation South east Asia’s migrant boat crisis is a global responsibility
°Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai authorities have united in refusing to rescue further boats and claiming that they will turn back any more arrivals.
Their refusal to accept Rohingya boats mirrors the early years of the Indochina refugee crisis, when Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand collectively refused to grant asylum to arrivals from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. After thousands of people had been pushed back by land and sea, that situation was eventually resolved with an agreement for permanent resettlement of refugees to western nations, primarily the US. ...
Thailand’s crackdown on migrant traffickers followed the discovery of a mass grave in a suspected trafficking camp in southern Thailand. But while trafficking is undoubtedly a very real risk, Rohingya migration is not only or even primarily an issue of trafficking, and pushing back boats is not the answer.
Many of those now stranded at sea are not voluntary migrants but refugees who face persecution if returned to Myanmar. ...
Myanmar’s Rohingya fear for their survival. Those who have fled to Bangladesh have fared little better, with little or no access to education and health services and very restricted access to the UN and other international agencies. These conditions have forced migration to other countries: to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia but also to India, Nepal and even Saudi Arabia. ...
ASEAN member states have a key role to play, but this is not solely an ASEAN responsibility. Many states have flocked to provide aid and assistance to Myanmar since a process of political reform began in 2011. Those states are now entitled to demand some return for their investment, in the shape of an improved protection environment for the Rohingya and for other ethnic groups inside Myanmar.
In the meantime, a massive humanitarian crisis is unfolding in south east Asia. Thousands of people remain stranded at sea, and they will certainly die if they are not rescued soon°
Channel 4 (2013) Nightmare island where traffickers imprison Burma's Rohingya mit einem sehenswerten Video.
Guardian-Dossier Modern-day slavery in focus: Thailand
Guardian Passengers on migrant boat rescued off Indonesia recall horrific scenes
°Passengers said the captain fled by speedboat five days ago after destroying the engine, and fighting between the Rohingya and Bangladeshis broke out as food and water ran out. Among the dead was the 20-year-old brother of Manu Abudul Salam, 19, a Rohingya. “They thought the captain was from our country, so they attacked us with stick and knives,” she told Associated Press.
“If I had known that the boat journey would be so horrendous, I would rather have just died in Myanmar [Burma] she sobbed. Dozens died in the fighting or from illness, it was said. ...
Bangladeshi survivor Saidul Islam, 19, said the vessel was hot and cramped. “We could not stand up. When we asked for water, the captain hit us with wire.”
Another, named Amin, said the captain would shoot dead migrants who asked for food.
The vessel was half under water when found off Aceh province on Thursday with children swimming around it. Six fishing boats ferried the exhausted passengers ashore, where they were taken to a warehouse in Langsa. Eight who were critically ill were taken to hospital.
“They were killing each other, throwing people overboard,” Sunarya, police chief in Langsa, told AFP. “Because [the boat] was overcapacity, some people had to go and probably they were defending themselves”°
Guardian How to solve the Asian migrant boats crisis – expert views
--> Lilianne Fan, Bangkok-based expert on humanitarian and conflict issues in Asia, research associate at the humanitarian policy group of the UK’s Overseas Development Institute:
"Fundamentally this is an issue of statelessness and citizenship. The approach that Asean (Association of South-east Asian Nations) will have to take is one that doesn’t necessarily push Burma too hard on the citizenship issue right now but looks at improving conditions more from a humanitarian and development point of view, stabilising conditions while the discussion on eventual citizenship and status takes place. This will be a long discussion, and it won’t be easy.
The temporary solution is a settlement arrangement for the asylum seekers and refugees who are coming to these countries. There has to be a mechanism and strategy at the regional level that allows countries of the Asean region to have an oversight on coordinated management – a strategy that looks at how to actually manage the population that has arrived temporarily." ...
--> Charles Santiago, Chair of Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a coalition of lawmakers advocating for fundamental rights in south-east Asia:
"The problem starts with the Burma government refusing to give citizenship to the Rohingya. They are all in detention camps, they are persecuted because of their race, skin colour and religion. This is a society that has been highly persecuted. This has to come to a stop.
Asean has to put pressure on Burma in order to make changes to the lives of people in Rakhine state. This is a long-term strategy. The short-term strategies would be for these countries – Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand – to save those on the boats. Right now you have to save lives.
Asean’s non-interference policy has to come to a stop. Asean governments cannot hide behind an archaic policy, now a human catastrophe is taking place in front of our eyes." ...
--> David Manne, Executive director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, Australia, and principal solicitor and migration agent:
"Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia should immediately cease their pushback of boats and render rescue and humanitarian aid. Humanity must be put before politics, and rescue at sea before border enforcement.
Australia must show regional leadership by doing all within its power and capacity to save lives at sea through emergency logistical, financial and humanitarian assistance. ...
Nations in our region must stop constructing a fortress around the bloodied fields in front of them. What we need is for these countries – and the international community – to come together and to uphold the existing protection obligations which are owed to desperate people fleeing from persecution, and to strengthen strategies which are firmly founded in human dignity, human rights and international cooperation." ...
--> Jeff Labovitz, Chief of mission, International Organisation for Migration, Thailand:
"The first possible solution is that all surrounding countries must commit boats to search and rescue, and let these boats land. They should also work together to up surveillance and to find and locate boats and track where they are. ...
Thailand is holding a summit on 29 May, but that’s two weeks away, and we need to get together on a more urgent basis now. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia need to share information, share any satellite information they have and to work out where people can disembark. They can coordinate that information with organisations such as IOM and others to make sure there’s assistance on the ground. All the countries of the region need to get together to see what the root problems are. They have been sharing some information about smuggling networks but they haven’t done enough between countries."
Wall Street Journal Southeast Asia at Sea Over Migrant Crisis
°Joynal Abdin says his dream died as soon as he saw the smugglers’ boat just offshore, rolling and pitching on the waves, a dark silhouette against the dawn sky.
“It didn’t seem big enough for 20 people, let alone 200,” the 23-year-old Bangladeshi recalls of that January morning. “I was filled with fear and started to say my prayers.”
A kick to the waist sent him sprawling and he started to wade out from the beach in Teknaf, on Bangladesh’s southern tip, through chest-deep water to the fishing vessel, along with dozens of other migrants.
It was the starting point in a brutal journey, at sea for weeks with barely any food or water, until his father raised enough money to pay off the smugglers and Mr. Abdin landed here in Malaysia.
“Whoever you think you are, you forget it on the boats,” he said. “They will kick, punch and starve it out of you.” ...
Mr. Abdin, the son of a rice farmer in Chittagong in southern Bangladesh, said a smuggler offered to take him to Malaysia, one of Asia’s wealthier economies, for 100,000 takas ($1,300).
Unemployed and a school dropout, he thought it was a golden opportunity.
Everything changed after he got on the boat. Mr. Abdin said he and around 200 other Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar were subjected to strip-searches by the smugglers, who took away money, identity documents and even shoes. They performed body-cavity searches on people they suspected of concealing mobile phone SIM cards.
There were six armed smugglers on board—one Bangladeshi, two Myanmar nationals and three Thai men, according to Mr. Abdin. “They would kick us if we asked for an extra sip of water,” he recalled. “We survived on a cupful of rice a day.”
The boat arrived off of Thailand after two weeks, but stayed at sea. “They said the Thai border was hot because of military and we couldn’t go ashore,” he said. The boat waited off the coast for 31 days, he said. “I saw dozens of people die from thirst, hunger and beatings.”
After his father sold a piece of land to pay the smugglers 250,000 takas, Mr. Abdin was taken overland into Malaysia, joining an underbelly of undocumented migrants in the cities of Malaysia, where they remain bound to the smugglers’ network for jobs and to evade the police.
Today, Mr. Abdin earns 13,000 Ringgits ($360) a month working as a sweeper at a cleaning company in Kedah province bordering Thailand. He reserves his anger for the agent in Bangladesh who sent him to the boats.
“If I see him again, I’ll kill him,” Mr. Abdin said.°
Ohne Worte:
°Zaw Htay told AFP: "We are unlikely to attend... we do not accept it if they (Thailand) are inviting us just to ease the pressure they are facing."
He said the root cause of the crisis was increasing human trafficking and said the discovery of graves in the far south of Thailand stemmed from Bangkok's inability to prevent trafficking and weak rule of law.
"The root cause [of the crisis] is increasing human trafficking. The problem of the migrant graves is not a Myanmar problem - it's because of the weakness of human trafficking prevention and the rule of law in Thailand."°
The Diplomat Asia’s Watery Graveyard for Asylum Seekers
°The underlying crisis, of course, is directly due to despicable conduct of the Burmese government and local authorities in Rakhine State, from where most of the Rohingya are fleeing. But the policies and actions of the Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian governments now confronting the outflow caused by Myanmar are inhumane and cruel.
On Thursday, an intrepid New York Times reporter convinced a Thai mobile phone company to give him the coordinates of a stranded vessel, as calculated from a mobile telephone on board, and rented a speed boat to go there. He, a photojournalist, and an accompanying BBC correspondent, documented the terrible conditions. Passengers were packed in close quarters with little food and water. The Thai Navy followed and dropped food, water, and medical supplies. Then, instead of towing the ship to safety, they made repairs to the engine, gave rudimentary instructions to some of the Rohingya on how to operate the ship, and towed it to sea and sent it on toward Malaysia — knowing full well that the Malaysian Navy will attempt to intercept it and force it back north.
It is imperative that they abandon these “pushback” policies and begin rescuing ships in distress and bringing the boats to shore, where government bodies and the United Nations and other agencies can help those in desperate need of assistance.
The Thai government this week proposed a regional summit to discuss the crisis — it would be held two weeks from now. That is far too long to wait. The relevant countries should convene immediately to discuss next steps for processing the asylum seekers and finding long-term settlement solutions. The United States and other donors should attend and offer help with mediation between the countries, and fund the response. The U.S. military should also offer to assist in search and rescue.
This crisis is extremely urgent. It is a situation in which key decisions have to be made in hours and days — not weeks or months. If immediate action is not taken, the Andaman Sea could turn into a watery graveyard, and when that happens, responsibility will lie squarely on those who stood in a position to help but failed to do.°
Großartige Fotos in The Atlantic Ransoms and Reunions: The Internet Huts of Burma
The Guardian view on the Rohingya refugee crisis: cruel and stupid
°The Burmese government’s draconian formula for dealing with this problem from history is both ludicrous and vicious. It is a recipe for the kind of tragedy we are just witnessing on the high seas, with many more disasters to come. It also provides an opportunity for the criminal rings that profit from the desperation of families trapped in camps where there is no work and no hope.
It is a sad paradox that the partial liberalisation of Burma in recent years has released both genuinely democratic forces and a popular chauvinism, particularly an anti-Muslim chauvinism, within the Buddhist majority which undermines those forces. Burma’s government must face down that chauvinism and change its policies°
Foreign Policy A People on the Brink
°When we asked what could be done to improve their situation, some Rohingya told us that the national and local authorities should allow more humanitarian assistance to reach them. Some called for greater international pressure on the government. Others called for efforts to change hateful mindsets within society against Rohingya and other Muslims. In the meantime, one woman I met in a Rohingya internment camp said simply, “We can just stay here, pray, and wait.” One thing is for certain: if violence does erupt and Burma’s leaders and people do decide to seek a “final solution” for the Rohingya, it will be impossible for anyone to revive the tired refrain of past generations of genocide apologists — “we didn’t know.”°
Der Artikel ist insgesamt sehr lesenswert.
Hindustan Times Of smugglers and kingpins: Southeast Asia's big money trade in humans; brokers prey on Rohingyas' misery
°In recent months, the gangs appear to have adjusted their tactics to offer cheap, or even free, sea transit south.
Rights groups say the real money is made in southern Thailand, where brokers hold the human cargo in jungle camps or safe houses awaiting release payments of around $2,000 from relatives or friends, or sell them on in bulk to farms and businesses in Malaysia.
A boatload of 400 people -- recruited, duped or even kidnapped -- could be worth up to $800,000, according to anti-trafficking group Freeland Foundation, which has helped Thai police investigate the illicit industry. ...
Trafficking experts say Thailand is the centre of a multi-million-dollar trade run by competing transnational criminal syndicates.
"Most traffickers from Myanmar and Malaysia insist that Thai bosses are taking the lion's share of the profits from this trade," said Matthew Smith of advocacy group Fortify Rights.
But the sums involved -- which Smith puts at $250 million since 2012 -- means "layers of people" have got rich, with ample cash left over to grease palms where needed.°
(250 Millionen Dollar seit 2012 kommt mir arg niedrig vor)
The Malaysian Insider Najib’s statement on Rohingya a joke, says DAP
°Serdang MP Dr Ong Kian Ming pointed out that the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report had downgraded Malaysia to Tier 3 status last year for not complying with the "minimum standards" to deal with human trafficking.
"As long as the Malaysian government refuses to have an honest examination of its policies towards refugees and migrants, our human trafficking record will continue to languish," Ong said in a statement.
"The recent humanitarian crisis involving the Rohingyas is but the tip of a much larger iceberg of the human trafficking problem in our country which the Malaysian government, led by the prime minister, refuses to acknowledge even exists," he added.°
The Irrawaddy Trafficked Fishermen Arrive in Rangoon from Indonesia
°Last year, a broker offered her son a salary of US$250 per month, without an upfront payment on travel costs, to work on boats off the coast of Thailand. With no prospects of employment in his home village, he jumped at the opportunity.
Kwat Kwat lost contact with her son a few months he left, when he called to inform her he and his colleagues had been detained by authorities in Indonesia, and the broker who arranged her son’s passage stopped answering her phone calls.
“He went on a fishing boat to Thailand,” she told The Irrawaddy. “A woman from Myaungmya took him away. He never sent any money back. He said he could travel there legally for free and pay back the cost of his travel from working. After three months, he told me that he was taken there illegally.”
140 men have now returned out of a group of 535 Burmese nationals trafficked to Indonesia by Thai fishing boats. ...
In March, an explosive Associated Press investigation revealed that migrant workers from across Southeast Asia had been provided with false documentation and forced to work in the fishing industry based around the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia. Numerous workers reported instances of serious assaults and deaths at the hands of their boat captains, and laborers considered to be flight risks were locked in squalid cages.
Those who were able to contact home did their best to warn others. Khin Than, a villager from Ngapudaw Township, Irrawaddy Division, said her 23-year-old son Myat Thu Win went to work on the fishing boats after a relative told him he would be able to work legally on the vessel, with a generous salary and no advance brokerage fees. It wasn’t long before Myat Thu Win was mugged by the reality of his “employment”.
“Whenever my son called, he asked me to tell villagers not to come,” she said. ...
“I only found out I was being sold when we arrived there,” he told The Irrawaddy.
He described his sense of working on the seas, which for many laborers included 20- to 22-hour shifts through the week, as being an experience where he was unable to determine whether he was dead or alive°
"The Arakan Projectmostly focuses its research and advocacy activities on the northern part of Rakhine/Arakan State where the majority of the Rohingya ethnic group lives. The project also monitors the Rohingya refugee situation and maritime movements in Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia.
The project is working toward is a future in which all people from Rakhine/Arakan State are able to exercise their human rights in a peaceful, just and democratic Burma. To this end, they work together with local communities and project their voices internationally. The Arakan Project’s main focus is on the Rohingya population who, deprived of citizenship rights in Burma, are subject to the most severe human rights violations. Its reports and research papers form the basis of international advocacy which primarily targets UN human rights mechanisms but also governments, international human rights and humanitarian stakeholders, and the media.
The Arakan Project has been engaged in research-based advocacy since 1999. It started as a project under the umbrella of two Thailand-based NGOs, Images Asia and Forum-Asia. In 2005, the Arakan Project was established as an independent NGO.
The Arakan Project is a member of the International detention Coalition (IDC) and the Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) – Chris Lewa has been elected Deputy-Chair of the APRRN Working Group on Statelessness since 2012°
Chris Lewa über Staatenlosigkeit und deren Konsequenzen: North Arakan: an open prison for the Rohingya in Burma
Forced labour still prevails: An overview of forced labour practices in North Arakan, Burma
Stateless Rohingya Children in Myanmar
Unregistered Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: Crackdown, forced displacement and hunger
Al Jazeera People & Power - Outcast: Adrift with Burma's Rohingya mit harter Kritik an der Performance des UNHCR in Thailand und Malaysia
Das Interesse der deutsch-sprachigen Medien war insgesamt verhalten, die westliche englisch-sprachige Medienberichterstattung endete im Wesentlichen gestern.
In Malaysia wird heute gestritten, ob die Regierungspolitik der Push-Backs richtig ist oder nicht, beispielhaft ablesbar an Facebook-Kommentaren, veröffentlicht in The Rakyat Post Boat people at our door
The Malaysia Mail Because of greed, Malaysian Muslims would rather watch Rohingya die, Perlis Mufti says
°Perlis Mufti Datuk Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin accused Malaysia’s Muslims today of putting their greed and avarice over their duty to help their Rohingya brothers in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the seas of Southeast Asia.
He said Malaysia had already failed the Rohingya once by remaining silent over their state-sanctioned persecution by Buddhist “terrorists” in Myanmar, and is now repeating its failure by standing by silently to watch them suffer and die.
“When European countries that are not even Muslims try to save refugees in their waters, we who overdo it with a ‘salawat perdana’ (mass prayer) that cost hundred of thousands, are willing to watch people die out at sea because we fear our prosperity being shared by others,” he said, in what appears to be a dig at a large-scale Islamic prayer and concert held at Dataran Merdeka last New Year’s Eve.
“Then we say ‘we Muslims are the best’?!... It is feared this loss of humanity will draw the wrath of God in the seas and on the land. We seek Allah’s protection for all the rakyat who are innocent,” ...
“If a disaster did not befall them, surely they would not risk their lives. But because of our greed, our fear that our prosperity will be shared by others, we cast them out to fight for their lives out at sea,” ...
“We are still searching for the remains of those who are almost certainly dead on a plane that crashed into the sea, while those who are still alive we leave to die out at sea. Where is our humanity?!” he added, in an apparent reference to the still-missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.°
In der Bangkok Post sind's die anderen, es gibt ein paar Artikelchen über Malaysia und Indonesien und was Myanmar zu tun und zu lassen hat. Kein einziger ist zu finden über den thailändischen Anteil an Fluchtelend und Ausbeutung der Rohingya oder zu den push-backs.
In The Nation heißt das nicht 'push-back' sondern guide away, es wird gestritten, ob zwei Inseln zur vorübergehenden Aufnahme schiffbrüchiger Rohingya dienen sollen und sich über den zu starken westlichen Druck auf Thailand beschwert.
Außerdem haben es etwa 100 Rohingya auf eine Insel unweit von Phuket geschafft und ein Marinekommandeur berichtet, daß das Boot in der Nähe von Koh Lipe (über das NYT und BBC berichteten, bzw. die thailändische Navy erst darauf aufmerksam machten) von den Menschenhändlern absichtlich seeuntüchtig gemacht wurde, indem sie vor ihrem Verschwinden Maschinenteile und Batterie entfernten.
Indonesien, zumindest in der größten Zeitung, der Jakarta Post: nullnadanothing.
Als hätten sich die ca. 8000 Rohingya, die noch in der Andamenensee treiben, in Luft aufgelöst.
Deutsche Welle Migrants in 'maritime ping-pong' in Southeast Asia
°A boat packed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels on Saturday, the latest round of "maritime ping-pong" of migrants being denied access to Asian states, the Reuters news agency reported.°
Scheint das von NYT/BBC-Journalisten bei Koh Lipe gefundene Boot zu sein.
BBC Myanmar denies blame for migrant boat crisis
(mit einem sehenswerten Video einer Thai-Journalistin)
°So the boat we found on Thursday, which had already been pushed back once from Malaysia, into Thailand, was then pushed back again by the Thai navy. The story is a bit more complicated. On board, more or less running the boat, are Rohingya brokers, who have good reason not to want to land in Thailand, where an anti-trafficking operation is underway.
Thai officers are negotiating with these men, who claim to speak for all 350 on board. So the Thais say they were merely helping by repairing the engine and sending the boat on its way.
But what about the women and children on board - more than half the passengers? What about all the visibly ill people, or those who look half-starved? How can an endless sea voyage in an appallingly cramped and unsanitary boat help them? Thai and Malaysian officials are not saying.°
(das von der malayischen Marine vorhin zurückgewiesene Boot ist offenbar nicht das von Koh Lipe)
Deutsche Welle Opinion: A foreseeable crisis
°To this end, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) only needs to remind itself of Article 16 of its own human rights declaration: "Every person has the right to seek and receive asylum in another State in accordance with the laws of such State and applicable international agreements." It's also about time that all the states in the region become signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees - a step only taken so far by Australia, the Philippines, Cambodia and East Timor. ...
The so-called Comprehensive Plan of Action, designed to deter and to stop the influx of Indochinese boat people in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is proof that such course of action is possible. With the help of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), key destination countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines agreed back then not to turn away these refugees. This shows that helping people in such situations is possible. It only requires a common policy where the burden is shared among many.
We in Europe are aware of just how difficult this is. Those who recently drowned in the Mediterranean serve as a gruesome reminder of a failed EU policy in which states simply seem to shift responsibility amongst each other. But we all know, both in Europe and Southeast Asia, what should be done: We should commit ourselves to helping those in need.°
Fortify Rights Myanmar: Authorities Complicit in Rohingya Trafficking, Smuggling
°Eyewitness and Survivor Testimonies
Some people didn’t have proper food or water [on the ship at sea] and got very mad. When that happened the [traffickers] stabbed them and threw them in the sea. Six people were killed and thrown in the sea. And then some people got so upset they just jumped in the water. There were men, women, and children on board. All the people who were killed were men. All six managers [of the ship] were [Rohingya] from Alay Than Kyaw [Rakhine State]. The knives were maybe 8 inches long. … They had weapons also in the boat.
— Fortify Rights interview with “D.D.,” Rohingya boy, 17, from Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State, September 17, 2014
About 12 people died on the journey [by ship from Rakhine State to Thailand]. When they were beaten they had heavy pain, and there was a shortage of water and food. We prayed and cried for rain so we could get some water to drink. The traffickers knew one of the 12 would die so the men threw his body overboard while he was still alive. He was an older [Rohingya] man.
— Fortify Rights interview with “A.Z.,” Rohingya boy, 16, from Sittwe, Rakhine State, August 11, 2014
When we reached Sittwe [offshore], the Navy arrested us all, and we had to pay 7-million kyat ($7,000 USD) to be released. When the Navy seized us, they took us as a group. The captain of the boat went to the Navy, and after two hours, he came back to the boat. We were cleared after we paid 7-million kyat ($7,000 USD). No one was taken off the boat. We were worried about what was happening, and when the captain came back, we asked the Rohingya guard [trafficker], and he said there was no problem at all. He said they already paid 7-million kyat ($7,000 USD) and that we could go. It was a big Navy boat. I saw about 15 Navy persons with guns.
—Fortify Rights interview with “E.D.,” Rohingya man, 27, September 27, 2014
When we got on the boat, we didn’t see anyone, but in the sea, we ran into the Myanmar Navy. When we were close to the Navy, two people from our boat got on the Navy boat and then came back to our boat, and we started moving. The Navy stayed with our boat for two and a half hours. After that, [the Navy] provided some rations and showed the way to Malaysia. I saw six or seven Navy soldiers. It was a big Navy ship. We left Myanmar, so maybe they helped us to go. They are driving people out of the country.
—Fortify Rights interview with “A.G.,” Rohingya man, 43, from Minbya, Rakhine State, August 13, 2014
When we first left Sittwe, there was a [police] checkpoint to go from Sittwe to the boat. We had to pay money at the checkpoint. … At sea, we saw the Myanmar Naval ship. They stopped us, and two people from our boat talked to the Navy. After the discussion, the Navy helped our boat along for two hours. They helped us leave Myanmar, and they provided rations for us to leave. They provided oil, fish, and rice. There were two big Navy boats.
—Fortify Rights interview with “A.I.,” Rohingya man, 20, from Sittwe, Rakhine State, August 13, 2014
I had to sell a gold chain to get on the boat. I don’t know what I paid; I gave them my gold chain. I gave the chain to the boat owner and he gave it to the [security forces]. I didn’t see him give it to the [security forces] but they were standing right there. I realized that they paid the [security forces] because they didn’t arrest us. There were many there. There were at least 25 [soldiers] when we were getting on the boat. When the 25 [soldiers] came, they weren’t allowing us to get on the boat. I said, “Okay, if you need money, I will give you my chain.” I gave it to the boat owner. The [security forces] were all Burman. They had three stars on their shirts.
—Fortify Rights interview with “Z.C.,” Rohingya woman, 50, from Sittwe, Rakhine State, August 12, 2014
When we were trying to get on the boat, [Lon Thein security forces] came and said they wouldn’t allow us to leave. We said we had no food and had to leave. They collected 380,000 kyat ($380 USD) from us. We gave them the money and they let us leave. They said, “Okay, you can leave here. This is not your country.” I wanted to kill them when I heard that, but they had the weapons.
—Fortify Rights interview with “Z.C.,” Rohingya man, 27, from Myebon, Rakhine State, August 10, 2014
When I saw the big boat, I was scared. I thought, how could we go there? All 27 of us wanted to go back [to shore]. We were scared. The big boat was already full. We were the last passengers getting on the boat. We all said we would wait for another boat. But they wouldn’t let us. … We were only given a small portion of rice and water twice a day. … They beat us. They beat almost every person on the boat. They used a plastic pipe.
—Fortify Rights interview with “Z.E.,” Rohingya man, 19, from Maungdaw Township, August 10, 2014
The main reason I left [Myanmar by sea] was because we weren’t allowed to move around. We couldn’t move from one village to another. We needed a permit. Sometimes when we had permission, the army would still beat us, and they’d ask for money. They mainly do this because they're trying to slowly kill us all. They restrict us and don’t let us move from village to village because they want us to die and to starve. We need to travel to other villages to survive. People would die without food and medicine. This is a deliberate plan.
—Fortify Rights interview with “E.H.,” Rohingya man, 27, from Mrauk U, Rakhine State, September 28, 2014
I had to leave Rakhine State because of hunger. I was in Bariza [IDP] camp. They [UN agencies] provided for one person only a cup of rice and a little oil. We also had only half rations because we needed the rest to buy other things, like fuel. I was living in the IDP camps, and it was very difficult and a very hard time, and that’s why I realized I had to leave the country.
—Fortify Rights interview with “F.I.,” Rohingya girl, 15, from Sittwe, Rakhine State, October 1, 2014
After my neighbor was shot, I stayed for another two weeks in my village. The military continued to come to the village to arrest and beat people. One evening when they came, my family and I fled from our home. It was around 8 pm at night. I was separated from my mother and sisters. I was with 35 villagers. We found an old fishing boat without an engine on the beach. We didn’t know the owner, but we knew we had to leave for our lives, so we took this boat to Bangladesh. I hadn’t planned to leave, but I couldn’t continue to live in Myanmar.
—Fortify Rights interview with “H.A.,” Rohingya boy, 17, from Duchiridan, Rakhine State, September 15, 2014°
Schöner englischer Satz: °Myanmar has suggested it may not attend°
In der Bangkok Post geht es heute u.a. um das Treffen der Asean-Staaten am 29.Mai zur Besprechung des weiteren Umgangs mit den Flüchtlingen, darunter viele Rohingya aus Myanmar und Bangladesh. Myanmar will an keinem Treffen teilnehmen und keiner Einladung dazu folgen, in der 'Rohingya' auch nur erwähnt wird.
Die zwischen 6000 und 20.000 Flüchtlinge, die noch in der Andamanensee treiben, dürften bis zum 29. Mai aber ohnehin verhungert oder verdurstet oder ertrunken oder interniert sein.
The Nation (Pakistan) Thailand finds 100 migrants on island, many still adrift
°Thailand has found more than 100 migrants on a southern island but thousands remain adrift as boats are pushed back out into Southeast Asia’s seas by governments who have ignored a U.N. call for a coordinated rescue. ...
‘Most of them are men but there are also women and children,’ Prayoon said. ‘We are trying to determine whether they were victims of human trafficking.’
Those that have made it to land are the lucky ones. Two boats that crossed the Malacca Strait from the Thailand-Malaysia side have been turned away by the Indonesian navy, and on Friday another was towed out to sea by the Thai navy. The boat towed out by Thailand was again near Thai waters early on Saturday, after heading first toward Indonesia and then Malaysia on Friday, said Thai Lieutenant Commander Veerapong Nakprasit.
The Thai and Indonesian navies have restocked the boats they have pushed back with food and water and said the migrants did not want to come ashore in their territory. But those on board have nowhere to go, and are not skilled navigators. ...
Thailand has called for talks with Myanmar and Malaysia to resolve the crisis. ..., Zaw Htay, a senior official from the president’s office, said on Saturday. ‘We haven’t received any formal invitation from Thailand officially yet,’ he said in an emailed response to questions from Reuters. ‘And another thing, if they use the term ‘Rohingya’ we won’t take part in it since we don’t recognise this term. The Myanmar government has been protesting against the use of it all along.’°
AsiaOne (Malaysia) Journey through hell and beyond
°"Please help me contact my family. They have no food or water, they will die soon."
The desperate plea was made by Rohingya Hakim, 37, who has been working in Malaysia for two years.
He left a UNHCR camp in Bangladesh and made the treacherous sea voyage from Cox's Bazar, a fishing port and trafficking hotspot in the country, to Malaysia. ...
"On the ship, some people got sick. They were thrown overboard even though they were still alive," he said.
Bangladeshi Rezaul, 18, who came on a similar boat, said the traffickers crammed 900 people onto the vessel.
Now members of his family who made the same journey have been stranded in a boat off the coast of Thailand and are awaiting rescue.
Hakim said a relative told him in a brief telephone call that 28 of the 300 boat passengers had already died.
"It took nearly three months to reach the holding camp, where we were asked to pay up to RM9,000 each. We were beaten with metal rods and forced to walk around the jungle from 1am to 3pm everyday without any water," said Rezaul, who now works as a waiter but finds it difficult to make a living.
"The police often take money from us. It is bad here too but there are no jobs at home," he said.
The situation is not much better for those who enter Malaysia legally.
Bangladeshi Rashed, 24, paid an agent RM15,000 for a visa to work in a restaurant but was sent to a construction site.
"My employer keeps my passport and I always get in trouble with the authorities because my work visa does not match my place of employment," he said. ...
Rohingya Salaundin, 16, sleeps in a 2.4m-wide and 6m-long shipping container with 13 other men.
It is located at a construction site, where more than 200 migrants work and the containers are stacked haphazardly atop one another.
Bathing is done communally in an open-air area and electricity supply is not constant.
Salaundin said Malaysia was still far better than his home state of Rakhine, however.
"At least here I can go out. The police just ask me for money. Back home, the police are far worse."°
The Malaysian Insider Refugee crisis is Asean’s great moral paralysis (ein gespiegelter Artikel aus der Jakarta Post von Charles Santiago, chairperson of Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and a member of parliament in Malaysia)
°The response of Asean governments from Indonesia to Malaysia to Thailand has been: “It’s not our problem.” ...
At a minimum, Asean member states should grant refugee status to Rohingya feeling the horrors in Rakhine state. They must commit to protecting asylum seekers, rather than driving them into the hands of abusive thugs or leaving them to die at sea.
The tragedy in Myanmar continues to develop as an issue that directly impacts the wider Asean region. The need for effective regional action to combat the crisis is clear, yet our leaders have consistently failed to act.
They hide behind the arcane and ultimately destructive policy of non-interference, repeating the demonstrably false claim that the Myanmar government’s persecution of Rohingya is an “internal affair”. They have stood by and watched, celebrating their achievements at fancy dinner tables, while ignoring the human misery that their failures have produced°
BBC Myanmar's migrants: The man buying back refugees from traffickers
°Human traffickers ferrying thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar are refusing to let some of those on board return home unless ransoms are paid. ...
Jonah Fisher meets one man in Sittwe, Myanmar, who is trying to bring them home - selling his possessions to try to pay the fees to release migrants to desperate relatives° mit einem sehenswerten kleinen Video
Reuters In Asian seas, a migrant boat finds nowhere to land
°For several days, the fate of roughly 300 desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants has been subject to a repetitive dance in waters just out of sight of gleaming Thai beach resorts.
Their boat, which those on board say has been at sea for up to three months, was found drifting last Thursday near Koh Lipe island, close to the Malaysian border, with parts of its engine missing. Thai sailors fixed the engine and handed the migrants food and water, before turning them back out to the Andaman Sea. ...
After being towed out on Friday, it headed southwest, according to Thai navy radar tracking seen by Reuters. It then took a jagged counterclockwise arc towards Malaysian waters, before its engine stopped and it drifted again in the sea. ...
Piecing together what happened to the migrants after that is difficult to establish because of contradictory accounts from Thai officials and near-total silence from Malaysia.
On Saturday, Reuters journalists in a speedboat spotted the boat tethered to the side of a Thai navy patrol vessel. The boat's engine was running and it was being dragged southwest across the Malacca Strait towards Indonesia's Aceh province.
As the Reuters team pulled alongside the migrants' boat, hundreds of rake-thin migrants could be seen huddling shoulder-to-shoulder on the deck, sheltering from the harsh sun with whatever they could find, including the torn-up boxes of food handed to them by the Thai navy earlier.
Men shouted from the boat, but could not be heard above the din of the engines. Women and children stared out and cried.
As Thai sailors yelled "Go away! Go, go!" at the journalists, the migrants' boat was released, and it again arced under its own power back towards Malaysia, where two Malaysian vessels were seen intercepting it.
A Thai navy officer who questioned the Reuters journalists at sea described tension and increasing desperation on the boat.
The officer, who declined to be named, said the boat appeared to be under the control of two or three "agents" who insisted on going to Malaysia over objections from some passengers and had hoarded food and water provided by the military. The engine was found on Saturday with water in it, a possible sign it had been sabotaged, he said.
"The women and children are not getting fed," he said, adding that when the boat was first intercepted near Koh Lipe they had to force the agents to give them food.
"The first time they were intercepted, everyone wanted to go to Malaysia. Today some of them wanted to come to Thailand but the men ordered them back," he said. ...
Several hours later, another Reuters team spotted the migrants' vessel again tethered to the Thai navy patrol boat. It was unclear if it had been pushed back by the Malaysians.
Veerapong said that, as of Saturday night, the boat had been turned and was heading once again in the direction of Indonesia°
Guardian Burma’s boatpeople ‘faced choice of annihilation or risking their lives at sea’
°“The Rohingya are faced with two options: stay and face annihilation, or flee,” said Professor Penny Green, part of a group that recently completed several months’ research in the Rohingya’s home state of Rakhine. “If we understand genocide to be a process, that is what this is. Those who remain suffer destitution, malnutrition and starvation; severe physical and mental illness; restrictions on movement, education, marriage, childbirth, livelihood, land ownership; and the ever-present threat of violence and corruption.”°
Financial Times Southeast Asia tragedy unfolding in three acts
°This is a tragedy in three acts. Many of the refugees bound for Malaysia are either from the western Rakhine state of Myanmar or from refugee camps in Bangladesh. The Rohingya, many who have been in Myanmar for generations, are effectively stateless. Ironically, as Myanmar’s military boot has lifted, anti-Rohingya sentiment has stiffened among the majority Buddhist population. The Rohingya, referred to dismissively as “Bengalis”, are popularly considered foreign interlopers with an alien religion and a high propensity to breed. In 2012, mobs killed at least 170 and drove some 140,000 into desperately ill-provisioned camps. As hope fades, the incentive to flee rises.
The second act is carried out by human traffickers. Many refugees are imprisoned in “ransom for release” camps in Thailand. Those who cannot pay may be beaten, raped or left to starve. Belatedly Thai authorities have cracked down after finding a mass grave in one of the camps. Smugglers, who can no longer store their human cargo in Thailand, have cut their boats loose at sea.
Act three is what happens when those boats try to make landfall in Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia. All three countries have pushed them away°
Mir grausts vor den Kommentaren in der ZEIT.
Guardian 'They hit us, with hammers, by knife': Rohingya migrants tell of horror at sea
°“They hit us, with hammers, by knife, cutting,” says Rafique, recalling onboard violence between the different groups of migrants. He presents his only possession – a Rohingya identity card from the United Nations high commission for refugees in Bangladesh. ...
“The government is torturing us,” says Zukura Khotun, a mother of three who fled Burma’s Rakhinestate and boarded a boat in the hope she could be reunited with her husband in Malaysia. ...
No one can say exactly how many people passed away on board. Rafique, who says he spent his whole life in a refugee camp in Bangladesh until starting on the sea voyage, claims that up to 200 people died during the journey.
But it is impossible to immediately verify or corroborate their stories. ...
Langsa resident Ismail Hanifah, 62, is visiting for the second day to check on the plight of his fellow Muslims.
“Yesterday when I saw them they were like animals, no clothes, no nothing,” explains Hanifah, “I said Assalamualaikum to them and they were all crying. They were so hungry. I heard from someone from Bangladesh that they drank their own urine to survive.” ...
For 25 days they were at sea, surviving on minimal supplies given to them from the Indonesian and Malaysian navies after the captain and crew deserted them. Amin says they slept crouched and huddled next to each other on the ship and tried to save supplies for the women and children on board.
But the migrants were desperate, thirsty and starving, and fighting broke out on board.
“When the captain and the crew escaped, deserted us, I was sobbing,” explains Amin, “One man from Bangladesh said ‘the captain has run away, we must pray to Allah’ but there was not enough room for us to kneel and pray.”°
Die ZEIT schreibt über den schleichenden Völkermord an den Rohingya
US Präsident Obama droht mit verschäften Sanktionen gegen Myanmar.
"Burmas diskriminierendes Staatsbürgerschaftsrecht verhindert nicht nur die Anerkennung der Rohingya als Staatsbürger, sondern befeuert auch systematische Menschenrechtsverletzungen", sagt Brad Adams, Asien-Chef von Human Rights Watch.
Der Menschenhandel geschieht unter dem Schutz und mit der Unterstützung korrupter Beamter.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/01/thailand-mass-graves-rohingya-found-trafficking-camp
Der Sender fm4 des Östereichischen Rundfunks hat letztes Jahr über The Rohingya People of Myanmar berichtet.
Ärzte ohne Grenzen, die fast 20 Jahre lang im Rakhine State gearbeitet haben, sind von der Regierung Myanmar hinausgeworfen worden, weil sie angeblich fälschlicherweise über die Behandlung von Opfern eines Massakers berichtet haben, das von Sicherheitskräften und Buddhisten begangen worden ist.
Die Menschenrechtsorganisation Fortify Rights sagt, dass Regierungsanweisungen, wie sie in geleakten Dokumenten zu sehen sind, auf eine staatliche Verfolgung hinauslaufen.
Diese Gesetze, die nicht veröffentlicht wurden, betreffen jeden Lebensbereich der Rohingya. Wen und ob, sie heiraten dürfen, wieviel Kinder sie bekommen, ob sie zum Fußballspielen ins Nachbardorf gehen und ob sie Reparaturen an ihrem Haus durchführen dürfen. Es soll ihnen das Leben so schwer wie möglich gemacht werden.
Mark Farmaner sagt in dem Interview mit fm4, dass mindestens 450 Rohingya im Gefängnis sitzen, weil sie unerlaubt geheiratet haben. Eine Erlaubnis gibt es nur für hohes Bestechungsgeld.
Mark Farmaner ist von der Burma Campaign UK.
Die Seite ist bei fm4 verlinkt.
http://fm4.orf.at/stories/1734250/
Ach Schachnerin, Sie sind eine Liebe - ich kam mir schon extrem blöd vor, nachdem sich kaum jemand in der FC/dF für den Völkermord an den Rohinya zu interessieren scheint. Vielen Dank für die links!
..."Und die Moral von der Geschicht?"...
Wer kauft denn die ganzen Reifen in der Welt?
Die Australier machen das ganz gekonnt, die Hopsen mit dem Kängeruh durch Melbourne und Sydney, die brauchen keine Reifen mehr, deshalb haben sie auch die Küste dichtgemacht.
Seite 12
The Daily Star Indonesian fishermen 'told not to save migrants'
°Fishermen in Indonesia's Aceh province say they have been told by officials not to rescue migrants from boats off the coast, even if they are drowning. ...
An army official said it would be illegal for any more of the migrants to come to shore. ...
But one fisherman told the BBC that despite the warning they would continue rescuing people if they saw them drowning.
"They're human beings; we need to rescue them," he said.
Military spokesperson Fuad Basya said fishermen could deliver food, fuel and water to the boats, or help with repairs, but that bringing them to shore would constitute an illegal entry into Indonesia.
Meanwhile the mayor of Langsa has said the city has no budget for aid on this scale, and that it has received no help from Jakarta.
"In short, yes, we need some help, immediately, from our national government or any other institution, including NGOs, to take care of the Rohingyas who are stranded in our place," said Usman Abdullah.The UN has called on all nations in the region to give aid and shelter to people in distress at sea.°
The Sydney Morning Herald ASEAN urged to act swiftly on Rohingyas as aid resources 'limited'
°"Where are the ASEAN member countries? Why are they in silence? If Myanmar will not help Rohingya people and keep persecuting them, I think ASEAN countries must in unison say Myanmar must be ousted from ASEAN," Mr Nasruddin said.
"It is not that we don't want to help them but there should be pressures put on Myanmar. We can handle it only for a short period but not for the long run." ...
Mr Nasruddin said boat people were being sheltered in three areas of Aceh - Langsa, Lhoksukon and Tamiang. "Doctors from local health clinics are treating them," he said.
Twenty-nine people in Langsa were admitted to hospital, with dehydration the most common ailment. Others are suffering from diarrhoea, dysentery, malnutrition, trauma, fatigue and beri-beri.
"The refugees have three meals a day. We have enough food, drinks, medicine etc. for one month. After that we don't know," he said°
Guardian 'We helped out of solidarity': Indonesian fishermen come to aid of boat migrants
°Some 677 migrants were brought ashore late last Thursday by Mansur and his fellow fishermen. While governments around the region have refused to receive what is thought to be thousands of migrants from Burma and Bangladesh stranded and starving in the Andaman Sea, the fishermen of Indonesia have stepped up to fill the humanitarian void. ...
Mansur and the other two fishermen’s small boats could take only about 30 people each but there were many more migrants waiting to be rescued. “I was lost for words,” he said. “I was panicked, because I have never seen so many people in the water like that. I kept pulling them from the water one by one, I couldn’t count how many, but my boat was full. After that I couldn’t take any more and there were still people crying for help.
“I didn’t understand their language. I couldn’t ask them anything, and I couldn’t understand what they were asking,” he added. “They just kept calling to me for help.”
Nearly two hours passed before six large fishing boats that had also been out at sea arrived to help. The fishermen laboured together, pulling the migrants from the sea and transferring them from boat to boat. Finally Mansur linked his small turquoise and orange boat to the migrant vessel to collect the women and children who had remained on board. He said he would do the same again if faced with another similar situation.
Suryadi, who only uses one name, from the fishermen association in Langsa, Aceh, said: “We helped out of solidarity. If we find someone in the ocean we have to help them no matter who they are. The police did not like us helping but we could not avoid it. Our sense of humanity was higher. So we just helped with the limited resources that we had at the time.” ...
When Mansur collected 30 women and children at sea and made the six-hour journey back to Pusung, the migrants were greeted with open arms. “We bought them a big bunch of bananas and water and they all bathed in our homes,” said Saipul Umar, 54. “They were so weak, especially the small children. They were traumatised.”
The migrants were given food, water, coffee and cakes, and a place to wash. “We treated them like family,” said Sulaiman, 76. Others asked questions about their stories, about why they were fleeing their countries.
After learning about the treatment of the ethnic Rohingya in Burma, where they are persecuted and denied citizenship, one village resident said that perhaps the migrants should have stayed in Pusung.
“They wanted to live here,” she said, “They didn’t want to go.”°
SPON Die Qualen der Rohingya:Erst Flüchtling, dann Sklave
°Sie schuften ohne Bezahlung als moderne Sklaven auf den Kuttern indonesischer Fischer. Sie hocken als Geiseln in Dschungelcamps in Thailand, werden gefoltert oder auch getötet, wenn ihre Familien nicht schnell genug Lösegeld überweisen. Denjenigen, die es bis nach Malaysia schaffen, geht es etwas besser: Dort werden die aus Burma geflohenen Rohingya zwar auch als Billiglöhner ausgebeutet - sie schweben aber nicht permanent in Lebensgefahr. ...
Auf die meisten der Rohingyas wartet nach der Flucht aber noch mehr Elend: Anstatt sie wie versprochen nach Malaysia zu bringen, liefern die Schlepper sie meistens an thailändische Menschenhändler aus. "Diese Leute betreiben im Dschungel und auf Inseln Folterlager, in denen die Rohingyas nach unseren Recherchen im Schnitt drei Monate verbringen", berichtet Menschrechtler Smith.
In den Lagern soll der Wille der Insassen offenbar gebrochen werden: Nahrungsmittel sind knapp, Schläge und Vergewaltigung an der Tagesordnung. "Wenn die Leute am Ende ihrer Kräfte sind, geben ihre Aufseher ihnen ein Telefon: Dann sollen sie ihre Familien in der Heimat in Burma anrufen und darum betteln, dass sie sie freikaufen." Etwa 2000 Dollar pro Flüchtling würden die Banden auf diese Weise erpressen.
Wessen Familie nicht zahlen kann, wird verkauft: Tausende Burmesen arbeiteten als Sklaven auf indonesischen und thailändischen Fischerbooten. Das berichteten Mitglieder einer Gruppe von 535 Überlebenden, die Anfang Mai von der Internationalen Organisation für Migration aus der Sklaverei befreit und zurück nach Burma gebracht wurden.
Ko Kyaw Thu schuftete drei Jahre lang rund um die Uhr und ohne Bezahlung für einen thailändischen Fischer. "Wenn ich versuchte zu schlafen, goss der Kapitän heißes Wasser über mich", berichtete er der "Myanmar Times". Einige seiner Landsleute seien getötet und ihre Leichen über Bord geworfen worden. Die Europäische Union erwägt wegen des Einsatzes von Sklavenarbeit auf thailändischen Booten einen Einfuhrstopp für thailändische Meeresfrüchte.
Die in Burma verbliebenen Rohingya wüssten inzwischen zwar, dass die Flucht aus ihrer Heimat ein lebensgefährliches Abenteuer sei, sagt Smith. Dass sich dennoch seit Beginn des Jahres Zigtausende in die Hände der Schleuser begaben, zeige nur, unter welchem Druck die Menschen stünden°
..."Die Rohingya bezeichnen sich selbst als schon lange dort ansässige Bevölkerung Rakhaings, die vor bis zu 1000 Jahren zum Islam konvertierte"...
..."bengalische Muslime"...
Malaysia:
"Der Islam, zu dem sich 60 % der Bevölkerung bekennen, ist Staatsreligion"...
Indonesien:
"Mit ungefähr 200 Millionen Muslimen stellt Indonesien den Staat mit der größten muslimischen Bevölkerung der Welt dar"...
Was wollen Sie aussagen? Scheißegal, daß Myanmar einen Genozid verübt, die Rohingya sollen gefälligst in muslimische Länder emigrieren?
Rohingya sind seit rund 1000 Jahren im heutigen Myanmar ansässig, sie sind vermutlich Nachfahren muslimischer Händler. Die Grenzen in der Region wurden von den Briten gezogen, ebenso ab Mitte des 19.Jhdts Muslime aus Rajasthan und aus dem heutigen Bangladesch in Burma angesiedelt, für das britische Handels- und Bankenwesen und zur Arbeit auf britischen Gummiplantagen.
Die deutsche Presse erwacht allmählich aus ihrem Tiefschlaf: Süddeutsche Indonesien weist erneut Flüchtlingsboot ab
°Große Sorgen gibt es derzeit um ein Boot mit etwa 350 Rohingya an Bord, das offenbar seit Tagen manövrierunfähig auf dem Meer treibt. Wie die Flüchtlingsorganisation The Arakan Project mitteilte, können Angehörige die Flüchtlinge seit Samstag nicht mehr erreichen.°
U.a. Chris Lewa (The Arakan Project) am letzten Mittwoch über das besagte Boot. Ohne Wasser überlebt ein Mensch etwa drei Tage.
Deutsche Welle Flüchtlingskrise in Südostasien: "Armselige Heuchelei und kalte Missachtung" ist eine kleine Presseschau in Indonesien, Malaysia und Thailand.
Was ich damit sagen will?
Australien wollte doch neulich der EU Nachhilfe geben in der Mittelmeerproblematik der Flüchtlinge, Sie erinnern sich?
Das war der erste Kommentar von mir.
Der 2. Kommentar von mir zielt ganz klar auf die kleinen neolithischen Diktaturen ab die mit dem ganzen Körper wedeln wenn ihnen die Global - Player am Schwanz festhalten, und das noch unter "Glaubensbrüdern".
Im jetztigem 3. Kommentar füge ich noch hinzu dass diese Probleme, sowohl in Afrika und jetzt im fernen Osten ja nicht ganz unbekannt war, aber von der EU und der Bundesregierung immer schoen verdraengt wurde, und zwar nicht erst seid vorgestern sondern unter anderem von so "Gutmenschen" wie Walter Scheel, Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Erhard Eppler, Egon Bahr und Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, das ging unter Exportpolitik und unter billiger Rohstoffbeschaffung gründlich in die Hosen. Jetzt haben wir die Quittung, sowohl im Mittelmeer als auch im fernen Osten und in anderen Gegenden dieser Welt, welch' eine Überraschung.
Im übrigen versuche ich gerade diese Diskussion am Leben zu erhalten damit es nicht verschütt geht, da fehlen jetzt so 14 Kommentare, und dann schliessen sich evtl. noch andere Kommunauten an.
°Im übrigen versuche ich gerade diese Diskussion am Leben zu erhalten damit es nicht verschütt geht, da fehlen jetzt so 14 Kommentare, und dann schliessen sich evtl. noch andere Kommunauten an.°
Das ist freundlich, aber sinnlos. Dieser Blog wurde von der On-Red bestmöglich beworben, empfohlen, rubrifiziert, bei FB produziert und er ist in den Meistkommentierten. Da wird er aber morgen ohnehin rausfliegen, damit verschwinden und ich bezweifele, daß 14 Kommentare mehr viel mehr bewirken als ungefähr 80 von mir - das Interesse der FC am Genozid an den Rohingya ist verhalten.
Der Blog ist aber ein Steinbruch an Quellen - falls mal wer über Flucht, Menschenhandel, Boat People, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesien, Rohingya, Genozid bloggen will.
Aus meiner Sicht hat Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul übrigens gar nicht so schlechte Arbeit gemacht. Ich möchte das aber hier nicht weiter vertiefen, weil es das Thema verläßt.
"Da wird er aber morgen ohnehin rausfliegen, damit verschwinden und ich bezweifele, daß 14 Kommentare mehr viel mehr bewirken als ungefähr 80 von mir - das Interesse der FC am Genozid an den Rohingya ist verhalten."
Da das leider so ist, machen sie doch folgendes: "Kopieren Sie ihren Text in einen neuen Beitrag, setzen einen fetten Link auf den Beitrag hier und warten ab.
Es liegt vielleicht weniger am Interesse der Leser, als an dem begrenzten Aufnahmevermögen, was Katastrophen unserer Welt betrifft. Wir haben zurzeit reichlich davon. Im Übrigen gilt es auch seine Aufmerksamkeit auf bestimmte Schwerpunkte zu setzen und sich nicht zu verzetteln. Was jetzt keine Vorlage für Vergleiche oder Bewertungen sein sollte.
Ansonsten machen sie sich viel Arbeit, was so nebenbei auch die Englischkenntnisse fordert (reaktiviert). Möglicherweise aber auch ein kleines Lesehandicap für den einen oder anderen.
°was so nebenbei auch die Englischkenntnisse fordert°
Ich kann nicht dafür, daß die deutschsprachige Presse geringfügiges Interesse am Genozid an den Rohingya und am angekündigten Sterben von 6000 bis 20.000 Boat People erst heute entdeckt hat und die englischsprachige Presse von vor Tagen wiederkäut.
Englisch läßt sich vor allem durch Gebrauch reaktivieren. Notfalls - Interesse vorausgesetzt - kann man sich einer Übersetzungsmaschine bedienen.
Mit der Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie haben Sie recht, die ist beim Thema Flüchtlinge generell verhalten, wenigstens in der derzeitigen FC.
NZZ Tödlicher Überlebenskampf auf hoher See
"Die muslimische Minderheit, die vor allem im Westen des Landes lebt, wird dort von der buddhistischen Mehrheit diskriminiert."
und
"..weil Burma die muslimische Minderheit nicht anerkenne."
Man beachte die fehlende Friedfertigkeit und Toleranz von Buddhisten, denen fälschlicherweise diese Eigenschaften als Markenzeichen zugesprochen wird. Jedenfalls lassen sich auch hier wieder die Folgen europäischer Kolonialpolitik beobachten.
Letzteres (Burma) müsste doch als Thema in einer UN-Vollversammlung verbindlich behandelt werden. Jedenfalls reicht es nicht aus, was hier zu lesen ist. Der regionale Gipfel wird wohl ohne Druck nicht viel ergeben.
Foreign Policy Southeast Asia’s Migrant Crisis Explained, in Maps
UNODC Migrant Smuggling in Asia
FP °One reason that Malaysia and Indonesia feel especially besieged is that in recent years other countries have closed off other options for migration. Under Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conservative government, Australia in September 2013 began a program called Operation Sovereign Borders to stop migrants from reaching the Australian mainland. The program has been quite effective in “stopping the boats” — if not at figuring out what to do with the migrants on those boats.
Southeast Asian countries now seem to be adopting a similar approach.°
Da haben Sie die Begründung nachgelegt, wie sich die sogenannte westliche Wertegemeinschaft selbst delegitimiert.
Entscheidender als die UNO ist der ASEAN-Staatenbund. Malaysia und Thailand sind so auf Krawall gebürtstet und so satt mit der ASEAN-Nichteinmischungspolitik angesichts der Boat People, daß damit gedroht wird, Myanmar aus dem Staatenbund auszuschließen. An Druck ist kein Mangel, die USA drohen mit Wiederaufnahme der Sanktionen und das kann sich Myanmar nicht leisten. Dumm daran ist nur, daß ASEAN-Treffen wie Wiederverhängung der Sanktionen für die Boat-People zu spät kommt (wobei Sanktionen ohnehin ein zweischneidges Schwert sind, indem sie immer die Armen am härtesten treffen).
Das Boot, daß Journalisten der New York Times und BBC am Donnerstag bei Koh Lipe gefunden (und die thailändische Marine darauf aufmerksam gemacht) haben und dessen Bild fast jeden Artikel ziert, ist spurlos verschwunden, mit 350 Rohingya, darunter vielen Frauen und Kinder.
Reuters No word on hundreds of Asian "boat people" pushed back to sea
°The boat was pushed backwards and forward between Malaysian and Thai waters last week in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has described as "maritime ping-pong". ...
The overcrowded wooden vessel was last seen late on Saturday when the Thai navy towed it away from Thailand and toward Indonesia, Thai Navy Lieutenant Commander Veerapong Nakprasit told Reuters.
"There is absolutely no information because they are out of the radar's radius," Veerapong told Reuters. "The last known location was on May 16 at 9.30 p.m. (1430 GMT)."
Chris Lewa, whose Arakan Project tracks the movement of Rohingya boats, also said there has been no word from the boat since Saturday.
"We don't have any news," she said. "It's unbearable not knowing what has happened to people on board."
The boat was first discovered foundering off the southern Thai island of Koh Lipe on Thursday, several days after Rohingya activists announced it was missing.
Thai authorities supplied food, fuel and water to the starving migrants, before pointing it back out to sea. That was the first of three occasions the Thai navy towed the boat out of Thai waters, and Reuters reporters on a speedboat saw it intercepted once by the Malaysians.
The fate of the boat has been unknown since shortly after the third time the Thais towed the boat out and sent it towards the Indonesian province of Aceh on Saturday.
An Indonesian patrol boat spotted a Rohingya boat off Aceh on Sunday, which then did not enter its waters, military spokesman Major General Mochamad Fuad Basya was quoted as saying by local news website Detik.com.
It was unclear if the boat was the one repelled from Thailand the day before. Fuad did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment.
The deputy commander of Malaysia's Maritime Police, Abdul Rahim bin Abdullah, said local authorities had been told by the Thai government the boat was in waters near Koh Lipe, but that it had not been detected by Malaysia.
Local governments had shown little concern for the fate of those on the boat, said Amy Smith, an executive director of Fortify Rights, a Southeast Asia-based watchdog group.
"They think that as soon as they get someone out of their territory it's no longer their responsibility," Smith said.
"It's scary ... Pushing boats back is really a death sentence for people."°
Frankfurter Rundschau Inhumanes Pingpong
°"Eine Vision, eine Identität, eine Gemeinschaft“ lautet der Leitsatz der 15 Staaten umfassenden südostasiatischen Staatengemeinschaft Asean. In diesen Tagen zeigen vier ihrer Mitglieder, dass die Parole nicht einmal das Papier wert ist, auf dem sie gedruckt wird. Ausgerechnet am Beispiel der Volksgruppe der Rohingya, die zu den am schlimmsten verfolgten Ethnien der Welt gehört, demonstrieren Thailand, Birma, Malaysia und Indonesien ihren Mangel an Gemeinsinn und Achtung der Menschenwürde.
Verursacher Birma will mit allem nichts zu tun haben. Das Land ist seit rund 1000 Jahren die Heimat der muslimischen Rohingya. Sie werden gegenwärtig von fanatischen buddhistischen Mönchen und deren extremistischen Anhängern drangsaliert und diskriminiert, wo es nur geht. Aber da die Rohingya laut offizieller Lesart keine Bürger Birmas sind, gibt es auch keine Verfolgung, geschweige denn eine birmanische Mitverantwortung für den Menschen-Pingpong, mit dem die Nachbarn Thailand, Malaysia und Indonesien gegenwärtig Schande über sich selbst bringen.
Thailands skandalöses Verhalten war bis zu einem gewissen Grad zu erwarten. Jahrelang sahen dort gewählte und ungewählte Regierungen darüber hinweg, dass korrupte Beamte und Politiker sowie Offiziere der Sicherheitskräfte zu den Drahtziehern des ebenso lukrativen wie brutalen Geschäfts mit den Flüchtlingen gehörten. Es wurden nicht nur Menschen von Birma nach Malaysia geschmuggelt. Diejenigen Rohingya, deren Verwandte die von den Menschenhändlern verlangten Auslösesummen nicht berappten, ließ man entweder verhungern oder ermorden. ...
Jetzt geht Thailand gegen die Banden vor – und stellt sich postwendend auf eine Ebene mit den Schmugglern. Denn Bangkok nimmt wiederum den Tod von Passagieren in Kauf, wenn die Seelenverkäufer voller Rohingya ins offene Meer zurückgedrängt werden – mal ganz abgesehen davon, dass Thailands Marine vorher stundenlang mit den Menschenhändlern verhandelt, die für die Boote verantwortlich sind. ...
Man könnte der Regierung von Birma mal ordentlich die Leviten lesen. Aber die Heimat der Rohingya gehört ebenso zur südostasiatischen Staatengemeinschaft Asean wie Thailand, Malaysia und Indonesien. Und bei Asean gehört es zum guten Ton, sich nicht in innere Angelegenheiten der Nachbarn einzumischen. Offenbar ist es zu viel verlangt von Birmas Nachbarn, für „ein paar“ über Bord gehende Rohingya dieses fragwürdige Prinzip der Nichteinmischung über Bord zu werfen°
Der Horror von Malakka (Telepolis 18.05 - Fabian Köhler)
Die Bilder der thailändischen Reporterin sagen alles.
Time Magazin Rohingya Say Quake-Ravaged Nepal Is Better Than Life at Home or Death at Sea
°In spite of its seismological perils, Nepal affords the Rohingya an opportunity to carve out a life freer than Southeast Asia, and many hope to bring kin — if they ever find them — to also settle in Kathmandu.
Though far from perfect, quake-ravaged Nepal may offer the best hope to a community whose statelessness remains a source of horrific vulnerability.
“This is the situation of the Rohingya,” says Hassan. “The person who is not a citizen anywhere has no limit to the punishment he can suffer.”°
In den nächsten Tagen habe ich keine Zeit für den News-Service, das müßten bei Interesse andere übernehmen.
Weil dieser Blog heute von der Startseite verschwinden wird, habe ich schnell noch einen neuen geschrieben: Schwimmende Särge
Danke an alle, die Quellen beigetragen oder auch nur gelegentlich mitgelesen haben. Es ist eigentlich nicht auszuhalten, dem Sterben in der Andamanensee ohne jede Möglichkeit zur Nothilfe fast in Echtzeit zuzusehen, das geht mir nicht anders als Ihnen.
|| das Interesse der FC am Genozid an den Rohingya ist verhalten ||
Was kann ich tun..?
Letzte Woche war ein Artikel über die Ursache der Katastrophe in der Süddeutschen.
Die Ware Mensch hat Schiffbruch erlitten
°|| das Interesse der FC am Genozid an den Rohingya ist verhalten || Was kann ich tun..?°
Sich interessieren, obwohl es kaum auszuhalten ist?
Das müssen Sie schon selbst entscheiden, ich habe leider keine einzige Antwort anzubieten. Dieser Blog besteht überwiegend aus meinen Kommentaren mit links auf englischsprachige Berichterstattung, der die deutsche nach wie vor um Tage hinterherhinkt. Ich hatte zwischenzeitlich den Eindruck, daß hier kein Mensch mehr mitliest und wünsche mir sehr, daß das ein Irrtum ist.
Das ist ein Irrtum.
Bangladesh will die Rohingya von einem Camp in der Nähe der burmesischen Grenz auf eine abgelgene Insel umsiedeln (deportieren tät besser passen), sie könnten dem Tourismus schaden.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/bangladesh-plans-to-move-rohingya-refugees-to-island-in-the-south