Category: Rohingya Reports

Rohingya pouring out of Myanmar, straining resources in Bangladesh, so the West should take them

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update on the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar (Burma).  We haven’t written about them for some time so when I saw this opinion piece in the Daily Star from Dhaka, the Capitol of Bangladesh, I decided to post it to bring readers up to date.

Muslim Bangladesh is pushing fellow Muslim Rohingya back across the border into Myanmar.  Where is that much ballyhooed Muslim charity?

A European Parliament resolution passed only last month called on the Bangladesh government to “recognise that the unregistered Rohingyas are stateless asylum seekers who have fled persecution in Myanmar and are in need of international protection.” However, in spite of such calls, the government still continues with its forced repatriation drive. In recent months, border authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown in Bangladesh, pushing over 2,000 Rohingyas back across the border into Myanmar where they are likely to face arrest for leaving their villages without a travel permit.

Citizens of Bangladesh fear job loss, radicalization (Islamic?) and crime with the influx.

Though half of the Rohingya who make their way to Bangladesh are taken in by sympathetic local families until they find their feet, it remains a fragile relationship. Many locals are competing for jobs with the Rohingya (who are often willing to work for less than Bangladeshis) and this often fuels local tensions. Others worry that armed extremist gangs are radicalising the youth of this marginalised, leaderless community, and suspicions of drug smuggling and an increase in petty crime in the camps have been recorded in the local press.

Bangladesh didn’t sign the 1951 UN Convention, the country is poor and so the West needs to help.  What else is new?

Bangladesh, like India, Thailand and Pakistan, didn’t sign the 1951 Refugee Convention (the global treaty that defines who is eligible for refugee status and what rights they are guaranteed) and cannot be expected to take on such a massive challenge single-handed. As one of the poorest nations in the world, it doesn’t have the financial resources to cope with such a huge influx of people. However, the Thai boat crisis of 2009 should have made clear that regional solutions are needed to solve this issue. There has to be sustained regional pressure (including from India and China) on Myanmar to stop the ethnic cleansing and to recognise the Muslim Rohingya alongside the other 146 non-Muslim ethnic minorities.

The international community must also help relieve the pressure on Bangladesh by accepting some of the refugees that have already been registered. Since 2006, the UNHCR has resettled as few as 749 Rohingya from the registered camp. Five hundred were relocated in 2009 and another 190 are pending departure for the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the US. It’s a rate of departure that barely covers the population growth of 2.9 percent within the registered camp; right now, the system is simply paying off the human interest.

Coming to a town near you?  Probably Ft. Wayne is on the list so as to add to the incendiary mix of Burmese they already have!

Oh,  here is an idea, maybe rich Saudi Arabia could take in their fellow Muslims.  No, that won’t work, I just remembered that Saudi Arabia imprisons and deports Rohingya, here.

This makes the 90th post we have written on the Rohingya, see our Rohingya Reports category, here.

Bangladesh: Rohingya wrangling continues

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The hot political debate going on between Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh, where tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have arrived in recent decades, continues as Myanmar says they will take some back, but the Rohingya are now refusing to go back.

From AFP:

DHAKA — Bangladesh’s plans to repatriate 9,000 Myanmar Muslim refugees to their homeland hit trouble on Wednesday when a leader of the minority said they would refuse to leave.

Bangladesh’s top foreign ministry official, Mirajul Quayes, said Tuesday that neighbouring Myanmar had agreed to take back 9,000 Rohingya refugees in what was seen as a breakthrough in a decade-long problem.

Quayes, the foreign secretary, said during talks with Myanmar deputy foreign minister Maung Myint in Dhaka that the military regime had agreed to accept nearly one-third of the officially recognised refugees now in Bangladesh. 

[…..]

Described by the United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities, some 250,000 Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh in the early 1990s. But some 230,000 were later taken back by Myanmar following a UN-brokered deal.

Since then, thousands of Rohingyas from Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s northern Rakhaine state have streamed across the border every year and are now estimated to number nearly 400,000.

But only 28,000 of them have been granted official refugee status and are allowed to stay in two UN-assisted camps in the country’s Cox’s Bazar district just miles (kilometres) across the Myanmar border.

“Some 9,000, are ready to be repatriated following verification, as the Myanmar government has assured us today that they are also ready. And it can begin within the shortest possible time,” Quayes said Tuesday.

Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Dipu Moni last August said the undocumented refugees put a “heavy burden” on Dhaka, causing major social, economic problems.

Meanwhile we are hearing more accounts of Rohingya showing up in Burmese communities in the US.

For new readers:   We have an entire category with 88 posts on the Rohingya issue, here, if you would like to learn more.

 

‘Progressives’ badger Japan on the Rohingya issue

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Poor Japan, one of the few countries* left in the world that wants to maintain its unique culture and strictly control immigration and its borders, is now constantly under attack by groups supposedly motivated by pure humanitarian concerns.   I say supposed because I believe these are really far left ‘progressives’  and elitists who ultimately seek a borderless world.   Here is the latest assault, posted on the Rohingya Info Corner:

(Tokyo) – Japan’s new administration should protect Burmese Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan and press Burma to end abuses against the minority group, eight Japanese and international organizations said today. The groups sent a joint letter to the newly inaugurated justice minister, Keiko Chiba, and foreign minister, Katsuya Okada.

“Tokyo’s silence sends a message to Burma’s generals that their horrendous persecution of the Rohingya can continue,” said Kanae Doi, Tokyo director at Human Rights Watch. “Japan’s new government should urgently review its policies to protect the Rohingya both in Japan and in Burma.”

Apparently there are 110 Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan wanting refugee status.  This letter says they arrived in Japan by air.  Now, how on earth did abjectly poor Rohingya Muslims get the airfare money to get to Japan?  And, don’t you just love the phrase “made their way!”  Could this have been a set-up?   I don’t doubt that for a minute.

The organizations urged Chiba to rescind deportation orders that would return asylum seekers to Burma and to grant Special Residential Permits to Rohingya in Japan. Over the past decade, more than 110 Rohingya have made their way to Japan, mainly by air, and petitioned the Japanese government for asylum. While there have been no reports of forcible repatriation of Rohingya asylum seekers to Burma, many Rohingya in Japan have been denied refugee status, detained, and issued deportation orders.

Here are the ‘progressive’ groups planning action in Tokyo today:

The letter was signed by Amnesty International Japan, Arakan Rohingya Organization-Japan (JARO), and the Lawyers’ Group for Burmese Refugee Applicants, the Burmese Rohingya Association in Japan, the Christian Coalition for Refugee and Migrant Workers (CCRMW), the People’s Forum on Burma, BurmaInfo, and Human Rights Watch.

[….]

The eight organizations will hold a public event today in Tokyo around the report and the treatment of Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan.

Progressives use buzz words like ‘social justice’ which we are learning is code for far left political organizing.  I wanted to find out more about this group Christian Coalition for Refugee and Migrant Workers (CCRMW) and couldn’t find much except a tiny mention of them as a ‘progressive’ Christian group.  I then did come across the wikipedia definition of  Progressive Christianity which I found interesting, and I believe you will too when you think about the ranting of Obama’s Marxist pastor, Rev. Wright.  Liberation theology, according to this article, is one of the streams of religious thought that led to Progressive Christianity.

If you would like to see more posts on how Japan is being badgered, just use our search function for ‘Japan.’

* I reported yesterday that France is now belatedly trying to recover its French culture after being swamped by immigrant Muslim cultures for decades.

Indonesia: We’ve had it with all these asylum seekers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Indonesian government is making it very clear they cannot afford to keep all the illegal aliens (aka asylum seekers) landing on their shores or being apprehended in their waters.   They want the UN and Australia to do something about it. 

Meanwhile, remember all those Muslim Rohingya boatmen that brought worldwide attention when the Thai government was accused of towing their boats back to sea, those who landed in Indonesia have been given refugee status by the UNHCR and are ready for resettlement in the West.

From the Jakarta Post:

The government said Thursday it would demand a time line of how long the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, on board an Australian vessel in Riau province, would stay in Indonesia once their statuses have been finalized.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said Indonesia could not afford to let the boat people, who wish to go to Australia, stay in its territory for an indefinite period of time, as has been the case in the past.

“What would we do to them if they are not classified as refugees? And what would we do if they are? This has to be clear.”

Indonesia is struggling to cope with the rising number of illegal immigrants intercepted in its waters while making the perilous journey to its more prosperous southern neighbor.

The 78 Sri Lankans are only one group of people currently seeking asylum in Australia.

Another 255 Sri Lankans are refusing to get off a wooden boat at Merak Port, Banten, and their status remains unclear.

Reports in Australia have cited 66 incidents of interception in Indonesian waters this year, resulting in arrests of 1,642 illegal immigrants bound for Australia.

Many have become stateless, living in immigration detention facilities or shelters run by the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar who were found adrift off the coast of Aceh early this year were granted refugee status by the UNHCR, but have not yet been sent to any third countries willing to accept them. Dozens have reportedly escaped from their facilities.

Sounds like a few have other motives than a chance at a good life in the West.

By the way, Indonesia is a Muslim country.  I thought the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told us that Muslims welcome the stranger!

Comment worth noting: Rohingya Muslims are arriving in the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been writing about Rohingya Muslims since I first came across an article in Time magazine that said this:

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

I posted on it almost two years ago here.   I was told we didn’t take Rohingya Muslims as part of our refugee resettlement program at that time, but now we do.  Thanks to commenter, “Knowing,” my fears have been confirmed.  Here is his/her comment and my response at this post.

They are included in the Burmese allotment that the US takes. However, it’s no secret to the US or the VOLAGS when they come. In the group of people from Burma we take are Karen (Protestant, Animist and Buddhist), Karenni (mostly Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist), Chin (Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist), Ethnic Burmese (very few right now, generally Buddhist) and Rohingya (Muslim).

So when we say we’re taking Burmese that’s really an umbrella term meaning to resettle several persecuted ethnic groups.

This is my response:

Knowing, It may not be a secret to the State Department and the volags but I know for a fact that resettlement agencies tell local people that the “Burmese are Christians.” One more little deception for the local yokels,eh. I want to scream.

Last night I was telling a reader that my driving force in writing this blog is that I believe in the principle of good government. How dare big brother arrive in local communities and lie to people. Damn it, if refugee resettlement is good for communities then all the facts should be put on the table and let the local people decide what is good for their community!

Visit our Rohingya Reports category for lots more confirmation about why this is a huge mistake.

Update moments later from “Knowing:”

Well I guess someone could be trying to pass them off as Christians but with the exception of the Nepali/Bhutanese the majority of people resettled at the moment are Muslim. So one would truly have to be a yokel to buy in to that.

A word to yokels: the internet is a vast wonderland of information.