Should Rohingya Refugees to be sent back to Myanmar ?

By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

YANGON, Myanmar – During the 14th ASEAN summit, the Thai and Myanmese foreign ministers reached an agreement allows Rohingya refugees back into the country if they can prove that they are Bengali.  Proof would include confirmation by relatives.  However, the refugees have resisted being returned to Myanmar, saying they would be killed.

Thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, Malaysia and the Middle East.  According to rights group, Rohingya faced widespread abuses including forced labor, land seizures and rape in Myanmar.  Benjamin Zawacki of Amnesty International points out, “in addition to that, they suffer from what is really systemic discrimination, systemic persecution. Things, for example, like not being able to marry outside their ethnicity, very strict restrictions on movement, the inability to work for the government, to hold jobs as civil servants. They are summarily disenfranchised. They are not able to vote. They are not even held to be citizens.”

The issue is being raised at international level when the Thai military sabotaged t Rohingya’s vessels and abandoning them at sea recently. Hundreds are believed to have drowned.  Currently, about 20,000 Rohingya migrants already live in Thailand, said its foreign ministry.

Malaysia, the biggest number of Rohingya refugees in the region, called for the Rohingya to be sent back to Myanmar. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi says that Rohingya refugees had become a burden to Myanmar’s neighbor countries.  The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations recently agreed to the solution to the problem.  Rais Yatim, Malaysia’s foreign minister said ASEAN wants Myanmar to promise “not to persecute them when they go back”.  Myamar Junta agreed.

Suaram, a Malaysian rights group, criticizes the call to return the refugees as “inhumane,” and urged ASEAN nations to give temporary shelter to the Rohingya until conditions were safe for them to return home.  A refugee urged the Myanmar neighbor countries to grant political asylum to the Rohingya.  “They are victims of systematic, persistent and widespread human rights violations,” says Zaw Min Htut.  Zaw became the first Rohingya to be granted refugee status by Japan in 2002.

For more information, please see
:

CNN – Thailand: Myanmar to allow refugees – 03 March 2009

The Japan Time – Myanmar refugee speaks out for Muslim group – 04 March 2009

International Herald Tribune – ASEAN: Myanmar must treat Muslim migrants better – 04 March 2009

Reuters – Myanmar’s Rohingya: A chronic humanitarian crisis – 04 March 2009

Author: Impunity Watch Archive