Its the Rohingya which is the root of the cause. The whole trade is facilitated by the Burmese navy to facilitate the exodus of Rohingya, then the culprit human traficker came into picture as the route is safe and sound.
LOL.. where is the prove..? even u PM admit that and already taken them all yesterday.. what wrong with u ..?
Check the whole article.. we already got their route and co-operate with Thailand Now..
the one make me shocked is the even BD navy ships and personnels contribute as the part of this trade.. this intel we got is from one of arrested people.. they supported the human traffickers under the name of poverty reduction and population bombing in camps within BD .. Now Myanmar and Thailand co-operation teams now investigating about the intel to be sure.. After that we will show the world where' the root of boat people ' exists .. dude.. stay tune..
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Amid international pressure the Myanmar Navy has resuced the first boat bringing 208 smuggling people, all of them Bangladeshi men. According to the initial investigation, the owner of the smuggling boat is a Thai citizen and the migrants were from Cox's Bazar, Chittagong and northern Dhaka in Bangladesh. Myanmar government gave them necessary humantarian aid and temporary shelters in its soil. Is this just the tip of the iceburg?
Far from the waters of Southeast Asia, the Council of the European Union agreed on Monday to create a naval operation, EUNAVFOR Med, to identify, capture, and destroy boats used by smugglers in the Mediterranean. However, EU military action against human smuggling networks should not put the lives and rights of migrants and asylum seekers in jeopardy, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
While EU’s “Destroying suspected smugglers’ boats fades from the media radar, the issue of boat people in Andaman Sea is now squarely in the world’s media spotlight. The Boat People in the Mediterranean and the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea are not new issues, but in fact have been deep historical roots.
Both of Myanmar President Thein Sein and Myanmar military chief
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said during a meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday that most boat people are expected to assume themselves to be Rohingya from Myanmar in the hope of receiving assistance from UNHCR. The two leaders insisted the boat people were not from Myanmar and they won’t accept the blame game foisted on them by the international community. They stressed the need to investigate the migrats’ country of origin rather than to accuse a country.
At the same time, Myanmar Vice President Nyan Tun said that extensive international media coverage about boat people and illegal migrants in the Andaman Sea and Strait of Malacca had caused concern among the global community although Myanmar has sought to prevent of illegal migration and human smuggling. Allegations that the boat people had left Myanmar are completely wrong, he said, stating admantly that most of them are not from Myanmar, although a few among them may be. The repatriation of 102 Myanmar migrants workers detained in Lankawi, Malaysia, by the Myanmar Navy, and that of about 500 Myanmar fishermen in Indonesia, proved Myanmar is ready to provide care and protection to ginuine citizens regardless of race and religion.
The phenomenon of boat people in this region goes back decades, but now illegal smugllers are using “Rohingya Refugee’ as an excuse to cover their transnation organized crimes. In the name of such refugee, the gravest violation of human rights are committed by corrupt officials who are involved in human trafficking activities and colluded with the trafficking syndicates.
The Myanmar government released a five-points statement about boat people on Tuesday, stating that (1) Myanmar shares concern expressed by the international community, (2) Myanmar deeply concerns with the sufferings and lethal fate of innocent people as a consequences of human smuggling and illegal migration, (3) the Myanmar Navy and Air Force would patrol to deter any illegal trespassing in the territory but would safely manage the trespassers, (4) preventive measures on human smuggling and illegal migration are being implemented through out the country and measures are also in place to maintain rule of law and security for all individuals in Rakhine State, and (5) Myanmar is fully prepared to work together with the international community, on humanitarian ground, to alleviate the sufferings of the smuggled victims.
It’s very clear that Myanmar is not the source of problems relating to boat people in the Andaman Sea, but rarher a partner of solutions. The international community must understand that pressuring and blaming Myanmar is not the way to save lives at sea.
The blame game and the wrong approach will not deliver the good results. The boat people crisis based on human smuggling and illegal migration is a regional problem and it will be difficult to solve the problems without regional cooperation.
The EU has found the best approach to solve their boat people problems, so what should be the solution for the countries bodering the Andaman Sea? The regional meeting in Thailand on irregular migrants set for Friday will be the forum to discuss solutions.
Three recommendations
on solutions should prove useful as we move forward.
First, regional countries need to cooperate to eliminate all human smugglers, their supports, their work and their secret networks, and they need to establish an official channel to regulate the flow of labour in the region. An important factor being neglected by many reports is the demand in receiving states. People arriving without proper documentation have been exploited by indusrties seeking for unregulated, cheap labours. Stories surface sometimes about workers living in slave-like condition with little or no payment. Myanmar and Thailand have already accelerated cooperation in cracking down on these labour forces.
Second, we have to promote not only bilateral cooperation but also the security and military cooperation, especially between navies and air Forces as well as between civil transport organizations among the countries of the Adamana Sea. We won’t replicate the EU’s boat destroying mission, but instead will use joint operations to tackle the smugglers and their supporters.
Finally, we need to expand the Bali Process to root out the secret smugglers’ gangs across the region. At the same time we need to open the doors for the media and civil society for all countries across the Bay of Bangal. We should promote the rule of law to combat human smuggling and illegal migration, not only at the regional level but also locally.
In the long term, the Andaman Sea countries and international community have to work together to move forward on the road of sustainable development, including poverty alleviation, education, socio-economic promotion and the creation of work opportunities, etc. The countries in the regional now face the challenges of the boat people crisis, so they must extend their hands to thoe sufferings of the smuggled victims by opening a new chapter of regional cooperation.
The blame game is not the answer, and instead we must find opportunities to reach win-win solutions.
[Zaw Htay is the director of the Myanmar President’s Office.]
