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South-east Asian countries fail to agree on cause of 'boat people' crisis
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A regional conference called to address the Rohingya migration crisis in south-east Asia ended Friday with no major breakthroughs, as Burma criticised those blaming it for fuelling the crisis and warned that “finger pointing” would not help. Delegates agreed on little more than that discussions would continue.
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
In Burma, state television announced the navy had seized 727 migrants, 45 of them children, found on a boat a few dozen miles off the coast of the Irrawaddy delta region, the latest vessel found in the past few weeks. The report identified those on board as “Bengalis” – a reference to Bangladesh, where the Burmese government claims the Rohingya people are from – and said they were taken to a nearby island.
Related: Asian refugee crisis: trafficked migrants held off Thailand in vast 'camp boats'
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Friday’s meeting in Bangkok was attended by representatives of 17 countries directly or indirectly affected by the growing crisis, along with the US and Japan and officials from international organisations such as the UN refugee agency and the International Organisation for Migration. That so many countries including Burma participated was considered progress in itself.
“The most encouraging result was the general consensus that these discussions need to continue,” said William Lacy Swing, director general of the IOM. “It cannot be a one-off.”
Related: South-east Asia migrant crisis: numbers are now 'alarming', talks told
South-east Asia has been beset for years by growing numbers of desperate migrants from Bangladesh and Burma. In the past several weeks alone, at least 3,000 people have been rescued by fishermen or have made their way ashore in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Several thousand more are believed to still be at sea after human smugglers abandoned their boats amid a regional crackdown that has unearthed the graves of dozens of people who died while being kept hostage in illegal trafficking camps.
Some are Bangladeshis who left their impoverished homeland in hope of finding jobs abroad. But many are Rohingya Muslims who have fled persecution in Buddhist-majority Burma, which has denied them basic rights, confined more than 100,000 people to camps and denies them Burmese citizenship. There are more than one million Rohingya living in the country.
At the start of the meeting, Volker Türk, the UN’s assistant high commissioner for refugees responsible for protection, said there could be no solution if root causes are not addressed.
“This will require full assumption of responsibility by Myanmar [Burma] toward all its people. Granting citizenship is the ultimate goal,” he said. “In the interim … recognising that Myanmar is their own country is urgently required (as well as) access to identity documents and the removal of restrictions on basic freedoms.”
Htin Linn, the acting director of Burma’s ministry of foreign affairs, shot back in a speech afterward, saying Türk should “be more informed”. He also cast doubt on whether “the spirit of cooperation is prevailing in the room … Finger-pointing will not serve any purpose. It will take us nowhere.”
The word “Rohingya” did not appear on the invitation for the meeting, after Burma threatened to boycott the talks if it did, and most people who spoke at Friday’s meeting avoided saying it. Myanmar’s government does not recognise Rohingya as an ethnic group, arguing instead they are really Bangladeshis. Bangladesh also does not recognise the Rohingya as citizens.
An official summary of the meeting included a list of proposals and recommendations that were “put forward”, including ensuring the UN has access to migrants and addressing the issue’s root causes. It was not clear that any of them had been agreed on, however, or that they would be implemented.
There were small signs of progress. Thanasak Patimaprakorn, Thailand’s foreign minister, said Bangkok agreed to allow the US military to operate flights out of Thailand to search for migrants stuck on boats one week after Washington put in a request to do so. And the US pledged $3m to help the IOM deal with the crisis, while Australia pledged close to $4m toward humanitarian assistance in Burma and Bangladesh.
South-east Asian governments have largely ignored the issue for years. The problem has recently attracted international attention amid increased media scrutiny as more migrants and refugees leave the Bay of Bengal. In many cases, they pay human smugglers for passage to another country, but are instead held for weeks or months while traffickers extort more money from their families back home. Rights groups say some migrants have been beaten to death.
