Category: Rohingya Reports

Rohingya in Malaysia protest, say UN treats them unfairly

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is so much news regarding the Burmese Rohingya Muslims today, I don’t know where to start!    We have been writing extensively about the hundreds (thousands, the number keeps changing) of Rohingya men attempting to get to Malaysia and ending up in Thailand where investigations are underway about their treatment by the Thai military. 

The rescued Rohingya claim they were attempting to find work in Malaysia, but I had read some time ago that jobs in Malaysia were scarce for refugees.   Now, I’m wondering if they aren’t drawn to the community action on-going there.  It seems the Rohingya have ‘community organizers’ (agitators) there putting pressure on the UN to give them refugee status (and persumably a ticket to resettlement in the west).

300 Rohingya protested two days ago in front of UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) offices in Malaysia’s capital.

The protestors, mainly Rohingyas from Burma’s western Arakan state, said they were being treated differently and were not being granted equal status by the UN agency.

Nyi Nyi, a leader of the protestors, said they held a brief demonstration and submitted their demands in writing to an official from the agency.

“We are demanding recognition as refugees, equal treatment by the office and a cessation to official corruption in granting refugee recognition,” Nyi Nyi said. 

[…..]

The UNHCR, however, denied the allegation, saying they treat all refugees equally.

The UNHCR has its hands full.  Look at the large number of Rohingya Muslims in Malaysia.

According to the UNHCR there are some 45,400 refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia, of whom approximately 40,000 are from Burma – with the majority of the Burmese refugees reportedly Rohingya Muslims from Burma’s Arakan state.

But, hey, Malaysia is a Muslim country, why can’t they just care for the mostly Muslim refugees? 

We have reported on many previous occasions that Rohingya refugees are already arriving in Europe, Canada, and I believe Australia and New Zealand.   The US will surely not be far behind.

To learn about Rohingya go to our special category here.   This is our 50th post on the subject.

Reluctantly a Rohingya update

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Jan. 21st:   UNHCR wants access to any Rohingya thought to be in the custody of the Thai government.

And this:   Dhimmi Thai professor says that  just because the Rohingya are Muslim it doesn’t mean they were trying to join Muslim insurgents in the southern provinces of Thailand.  They have different causes he says!  Oh really!

 

I feel like I need to update readers on the developing story from Thailand about the Rohingya Muslim illegal aliens and their alleged mistreatment by the Thai military, but there are so many increasingly sensationalized stories I can’t sort them out.

More importantly, I see the ultimate conclusion to this media frenzy will be that we and other western countries get guilt-tripped into resettling Rohingya refugees to your town.

Here is one story, entitled ‘So thirsty, they lick water off rescue ship’s deck,’ I’ll let you read it yourself.   One story says the men (they are all men so don’t be fooled by the news accounts of boat people implying women and children) lived two weeks with no water, another implies some lived 28 days at sea with no water.

Most medical experts say you can’t live for more than 3 days without water, but when they killed Terry Schiavo by withdrawing food and water, it took her 13 days to die.   So, I suppose the two weeks with no water is possible, but I have my doubts.

Bottomline, I can’t sort out the fact from fiction in the daily dozen or so news accounts of the growing public relations battle between human rights groups and the Thai government.

See Rohingya Reports for all the previous stories I’ve posted on the subject.

US investigating Malaysian government officials about human trafficking

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how, but suspect that somehow, this story ties into what is going on in Thailand with the Rohingya boat men from Burma (Myanmar).    The Democratically controlled  US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is investigating the Muslim country of Malaysia about the possibility that government officials are trafficking in refugees. 

Here is the gist of the story from AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Senate is investigating allegations that officials in Malaysia were extorting money from foreign migrants and were linked to human trafficking, American officials said.

The migrants, mostly from military-ruled Myanmar but also from other countries, were allegedly taken by the government officials to the border between Malaysia and Thailand, where they were extorted or sold to human trafficking syndicates.

The probe is being conducted by the US Senate foreign relations committee and the findings will be relayed to key US enforcement agencies and Interpol for possible action, Senate officials said.

“US Senate foreign relations committee staff are reviewing reports of extortion and human trafficking from Burmese and other migrants in Malaysia, allegedly at the hands of Malaysia government officials,” a committee staff member told AFP. Myanmar’s previous name was Burma.

“The allegations include assertions that Burmese and other migrants — whether or not they have UNHCR documentation — are taken from Malaysian government detention facilities and transported to the Thailand-Malaysia border,” the official said.

At the border, they alleged, “money is demanded from them, or they are turned over to human traffickers in southern Thailand.”

There is a Muslim insurgency on-going in southern Thailand, are the refugees being sold as conscripts into the Islamic forces?  Or is it women and girls being sold as Atlas points out today in Africa?

If true, it sounds like a win-win for the government-official traffickers.   Either get paid off or do your fellow Muslims in Thailand a good service by supplying the mostly Burmese refugees (Rohingya?) to the Islamic insurgency.

“If all reports are accurate, then as many as a few thousand Myanmar migrants in Malaysia may have been taken to the Malaysia-Thai border in recent years,” the committee staff member said.

“If they pay, they return to Malaysia. If not, they are sold to traffickers, according to the reports,” the official said.

I’m wondering what we can do if the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee finds this to be true—-cut off funds to Malaysia?  What?

BTW, this AFP story says we have resettled 40,000 Burmese into the US since 1995.

India rescued Rohingya boat men, but…..

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update Jan. 19th:   Read about the meeting of human rights activists and the Thai Prime Minister at the Bangkok Post here.

….India has its own Rohingya problem as we reported just last month.   From one of the metastisizing Rohingya stories this week about the alleged mistreatment (some say murder) by the Thai military of illegal alien Rohingya Muslims trying to get into Thailand:

India’s coast guard said Sunday it had rescued hundreds of the refugees from the Rohingya ethnic group, who live along the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, but that hundreds more were feared lost.

At least this story (AFP from Port Blair, India) mentions a reason for why the Thai Navy might not want Rohingya in Thailand.

Thailand is facing a brutal separatist insurgency in the south of the country that has left more than 3,500 people dead in the last five years, and the government would be sensitive about any mass influx of migrants.

An “expert” from Human Rights Watch discounts that fear.

David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar with New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Thailand had for the past few years taken a harsh stance on Rohingya landing on its shores, in part because they wanted to discourage further migration of the group through Thailand.

There were also fears that some are mercenaries trying to join the separatist insurgency, although Mathieson said there was little evidence to back up those claims.

Coincidentally, India arrested Rohingya passing through India to get to Pakistan just a few weeks ago.   Here  again is the post I did on that just after Christmas.   Indian officials contend that Rohingya have joined the HuJI—Harakat ul-Jihad-I-Islami (HUJI) (Movement of Islamic Holy War).  I have  no further word on what India did with those they detained.

We have been following the Rohingya issue for more than a year now with 46 previous posts in our special category, Rohingya Reports.   If at some point anyone wants to know more about their newly arrived neighbors and how they got there (mark my words they will be resettled to your town one day), you will be able to understand the public relations campaign that brought them to the West.

Update a few minutes later:  Thai Prime Minister to meet with human rights groups tomorrow and contends that Rohingya may be involved in drug trafficking and human smuggling and not Islamic terrorism.

Watching the Rohingya story metastasize

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The story about the Rohingya Muslim boatmen attempting to get into Thailand (or accidentally ending up there trying to get to Malaysia) is growing.   Once CNN reported the supposed “whipping” on the beach story yesterday, like sharks, the media is all over this.    I used to see  a couple of stories on Rohingya a few times a week, today there were over ten.

If you are reading this and thinking, well what do illegal aliens in Thailand have to do with me, think again.   Whether wholly true or not this story will be used by human rights groups to demand more resettlement of Rohingya to Europe, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

It is true that the military junta in Buddhist Burma (Myanmar) where these men originated is into ethnic and religious nationalism.   They don’t want all the minorities they have.  We have been resettling the Christian Burmese (mostly Karen) by the thousands and some Muslims too.  Officially we are not taking the Rohingya and I guess this is because they have been linked to Islamist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda.   However, Rohingya are being resettled in the west, most recently the UK and Canada.

If you are new to this issue, check out the first post I wrote on Rohingya (exactly a year ago) here and also check out our whole category on the subject.  There are lots of posts there about Rohingya moving into countries throughout southeast Asia.

This latest move—Rohingya boatmen going to Thailand either on purpose or by accident has now gotten the attention of the western press.  Reports vary (and that is the problem!) about whether the Thai army is sending Rohingya back to sea without paddles.

At least the BBC has addressed (but poo-pooed) the issue of whether the Rohingya have come to join the Islamic insurgency in Southern Thailand, and that is more than CNN did.

They (unnamed officials) explained that Rohingyas are seen as a greater security threat than the tens of thousands of other illegal migrants, because they are Muslim, because they tend to arrive in large numbers at one time, and because they are almost (Edit:  I have seen no account of any women at all) exclusively men.

Immigration officials told us there is no evidence to support the allegation made by some in the military that Rohingyas have gone to Thailand’s deep south to join the Islamic insurgency there.

The officials have told us that while most of the Rohingya want to go to Malaysia – where there is already a community 20,000 strong and the prospect of well-paid jobs – increasing numbers are staying in Thailand. The official figure last year was 4,886, and the unofficial figure may be much higher.

The case of the four drowned Rohingya.

I have three accounts of the alleged case of four drowned Rohingya just to show how the incident is reported variously by the media, and why it is hard to know what to believe.

From the Straits Times of Singapore:

Rights activists say one of the boats pushed back out to sea later capsized, killing at least four refugees and leaving another 300 missing.

From Short-News in Germany:

In one case 4 people were drowned to encourage over 400 others to board a drifting barge. Several were later rescued, but 300 are missing after trying to swim to shore. Other times the navy will confiscate engines leaving refugees to drift at sea.

From the BBC:

On 18 December one group of just over 400 was put on a navy boat, which was towing a barge behind it, says Chris Lewa from the Arakan Project.

Their hands were tied. Once out at sea they were ordered to move onto the barge at gunpoint. They refused. The Thai troops then tied the feet of four of them and threw them overboard.

Apparently the same incident!   Pick the version that suits you best!