Nearly 2,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh rescued in Indonesia, Malaysia

[katarabhumi]

I just hope they can assimilate and get along with the locals in Aceh.

 

[powastick]

 

[bongbang]

Looking at the faces I can clearly say they dont look like majority of Bangladeshis. For outsiders it may look same but only some adjacent border people of southern Chittagong people look close to them. Also their language is very different. So far Indonesian effort is humanitarian. These kinds of boats are also not available in BD. Rohingya migrants are attracting Bangladeshis to choose this dangerous route.

 

[70U63]

South-east Asia faces its own migrant crisis as states play 'human ping-pong' | World news | The Guardian

“The Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian navies should stop playing a three-way game of human ping pong, and instead should work together to rescue all those on these ill-fated boats,” said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch Asia.

Like Thailand, Malaysia worries about the impact on its lucrative western tourist trade of unsightly humanitarian problems washing up on its shores. But its concerns run deeper. It is already home to about 150,000 foreign migrants, about 45,000 of whom are Rohingya.

Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, deputy home affairs minister, said the source of the problem lay in political unstable and economically deprived Burma and Bangladesh.

“What do you expect us to do? We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border. We have treated them humanely but they cannot be flooding our shores like this.

“Of course, there is a problem back home in Myanmar [Burma] with the way they treat the Rohingya people ... You talk about democracy, but don’t treat your citizens like trash, like criminals until they need to run away to our country ... We need to send a very strong message to Myanmar that they need to treat their people with humanity,” he said.

My Deputy Home Minister just want to express that Malaysian are very nice people

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Aceh hmm, they must compete with local to hunts jobs at infrastructure works and Coconut palm oil plantations. But i think, the competition will not as though as in Java or other area, as Aceh largely is still under population because of Tsunamis effects one decade ago

They're only around 500 people. They won't have to compete much with the local.

Looking at the faces I can clearly say they dont look like majority of Bangladeshis. For outsiders it may look same but only some adjacent border people of southern Chittagong people look close to them. Also their language is very different. So far Indonesian effort is humanitarian. These kinds of boats are also not available in BD. Rohingya migrants are attracting Bangladeshis to choose this dangerous route.

What humanitarian is taking more of them.

 

[pr1v4t33r]

In Aceh, rohingya refugee will be provided shelter, food, water, medical treatment, but not job nor education. The immigration and UNHCR will record them and try to find country that will accept them and grant them citizenship. This process can take months or even years before they can finally resettled.

Rohingya chidren playing soccer in Aceh refugee camp.

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

RI not to expel Rohingyan
refugees
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | World | Thu, May 14 2015, 6:16 PM
World News

Ethnic Rohingya children wait to be taken to a temporary shelter in Seunuddon, Aceh province, Indonesia. Photograph: S Yulinnas/AP

RI not to expel Rohingyan refugees

JAKARTA:

The Indonesian government has no plans to expel boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh who were rescued after they became stranded on Aceh waters.

“Indonesia is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention on Refugees but has implemented the non-refoulement principle,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Thursday.

The non-refoulement principle forbids the returning of a victim of persecution to his or her persecutor.

“What Indonesia has done is given shelter and food to illegal migrants. What we do not do is force them back onto their boats and expel them from the country,” Arrmanatha said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

He said the regional administration in cooperation with the International Migration Organization (IOM) would look for uninhabited islands in the country to accommodate them.

Hundreds of Rohingyan asylum seekers, mostly Muslims, were evacuated from boats after they became stranded in northern Aceh waters. They entered Indonesian waters when they failed to land in Malaysia. Dozens of Rohingya have sought political asylum in Medan, North Sumatra. (rms)

- See more at: RI not to expel Rohingyan refugees | The Jakarta Post

Another Galang?

Galang Refugee Camp

 

[Nike]

Yes it will be another Galang Camps

except, maybe this time they will chose to live in Indonesia instead asking to be moved somewhere else, as the Australian will and never want to accept them and instead will place them to Papua New Guinea prisoner camps.

 

[pr1v4t33r]

Rohingya refugee getting medical treatment in Aceh, Indonesia

Yes it will be another Galang Camps. except, maybe this time they will chose to live in Indonesia instead asking to be moved somewhere else, as the Australian will and never want to accept them and instead will place them to Papua New Guinea prisoner camps.

They can't get citizenship in Indonesia unless they married with Indonesian citizen. They will live as refugee in Indonesia until they get resettled by UNHCR. They have no future, they can't get access to job and education, and have very limited access to traveling outside the refugee area.

 

[Zabaniyah]

I think it'd be unwise to mix as to where the Rohingyas belong, and the problem of human smuggling. Though related, they are two different problems with its own solutions.

This human smuggling had been going on for years. Who are these human smugglers? Who do they work for? Recently, some mass graves were found in Thailand. The evidence point toward the smugglers being of Thai origin who engage in this slave trade.

It's a well known fact that the governments in the region (especially Thailand), have been deliberately pretending that the problem did not exist when it very well actually did. It also says that there is a lot of corruption at high levels, particularly in regards to Thailand in light of the overwhelming evidence.

Such complacency, incompetence and ignorance are now showing the results.

Looking at the faces I can clearly say they dont look like majority of Bangladeshis. For outsiders it may look same but only some adjacent border people of southern Chittagong people look close to them. Also their language is very different. So far Indonesian effort is humanitarian. These kinds of boats are also not available in BD. Rohingya migrants are attracting Bangladeshis to choose this dangerous route.

They speak a dialect of the Chittagongian language, which is very different from Bengali. Most folks outside of Bangladesh do not seem the get this.

Needless to say, as long as the present government remain in power, the Burmese (and some politically righteous Bharotis) won't get it their way. And they'll remain in power for a very, very long time. It doesn't matter how one looks at it.

 

[70U63]

Myanmar's government has said it is not responsible for the migrant boat crisis in south-east Asia, and may not attend an emergency summit on the issue.

It is being called human ping-pong - the refusal of south-east Asian countries to accept mainly Rohingya migrants from Myanmar, and their navies' policy of pushing boats back into each other's territory.

So the boat we found on Thursday, which had already been pushed back once from Malaysia, into Thailand, was then pushed back again by the Thai navy. At the time of writing it lies just inside Malaysian waters. They tell us it will now be towed to a fourth country, perhaps Indonesia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32766748
Myanmar denies responsibility for migrant boat crisis - BBC News

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Myanmar's government has said it is not responsible for the migrant boat crisis in south-east Asia, and may not attend an emergency summit on the issue.

It is being called human ping-pong - the refusal of south-east Asian countries to accept mainly Rohingya migrants from Myanmar, and their navies' policy of pushing boats back into each other's territory.

So the boat we found on Thursday, which had already been pushed back once from Malaysia, into Thailand, was then pushed back again by the Thai navy. At the time of writing it lies just inside Malaysian waters. They tell us it will now be towed to a fourth country, perhaps Indonesia.
Myanmar denies responsibility for migrant boat crisis - BBC News

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

 

[Nike]

In Asian Seas, a Migrant Boat Finds Nowhere to Land
By Aubrey Belford & Kaweewit Kaewjinda on 04:12 pm May 17, 2015
Category Featured, Front Page, Human Rights, News
Tags: Malaysia, refugees, Rohingya, Thailand human trafficking

A Malaysian navy vessel patrols waters near Langkawi Island on Sunday. Malaysian vessels on Saturday intercepted a boat crammed with migrants after the Thai navy towed it away from Thailand, the latest of a number of vessels pushed back to sea by governments who have ignored a UN call for an immediate rescue. An estimated 25,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya boarded smugglers' boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the UNHCR has said. (Reuters Photo/Olivia Harris)

Andaman Sea. For several days, the fate of roughly 300 desperate Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants has been subject to a repetitive dance in waters just out of sight of gleaming Thai beach resorts.

Their boat, which those on board say has been at sea for up to three months, was found drifting last Thursday near Koh Lipe Island, close to the Malaysian border, with parts of its engine missing. Thai sailors fixed the engine and handed the migrants food and water, before turning them back out to the Andaman Sea.

That was the beginning of what local Thai navy chief Lieutenant Commander Veerapong Nakprasit calls “a cycle,” with the overcrowded fishing vessel bouncing between the waters of two countries determined not to take them in.

This rickety boat was just one of many that are at the center of a regional crisis triggered by a flood of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.

Migrants have long made their way from the Bay of Bengal’s southeast corner to Thailand, but a crackdown on traffickers by the Thai government disrupted the route and several thousand were left at sea with nowhere to go, though more than 2,000 have made it to the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia.

Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had informed the people on the boat found off Koh Lipe that they could come ashore for humanitarian assistance, but “they informed the Thai side that they wished to travel onward.”

After being towed out on Friday, it headed southwest, according to Thai navy radar tracking seen by Reuters. It then took a jagged counterclockwise arc toward Malaysian waters, before its engine stopped and it drifted again in the sea.

Hunger, mounting tension

Piecing together what happened to the migrants after that is difficult to establish because of contradictory accounts from Thai officials and near-total silence from Malaysia.

On Saturday, Reuters journalists in a speedboat spotted the boat tethered to the side of a Thai navy patrol vessel. The boat’s engine was running and it was being dragged southwest across the Malacca Strait toward Indonesia’s Aceh province.

As the Reuters team pulled alongside the migrants’ boat, hundreds of rake-thin migrants could be seen huddling shoulder-to-shoulder on the deck, sheltering from the harsh sun with whatever they could find, including the torn-up boxes of food handed to them by the Thai navy earlier.

Men shouted from the boat, but could not be heard above the din of the engines. Women and children stared out and cried.

As Thai sailors yelled “Go away! Go, go!” at the journalists, the migrants’ boat was released, and it again arced under its own power back toward Malaysia, where two Malaysian vessels were seen intercepting it.

A Thai navy officer who questioned the Reuters journalists at sea described tension and increasing desperation on the boat.

The officer, who declined to be named, said the boat appeared to be under the control of two or three “agents” who insisted on going to Malaysia over objections from some passengers and had hoarded food and water provided by the military. The engine was found on Saturday with water in it, a possible sign it had been sabotaged, he said.

“The women and children are not getting fed,” he said, adding that when the boat was first intercepted near Koh Lipe they had to force the agents to give them food.

“The first time they were intercepted, everyone wanted to go to Malaysia. Today some of them wanted to come to Thailand but the men ordered them back,” he said.

Chris Lewa, head of the Arakan Project which tracks Rohingya migrant boats, said she had been told of mounting tensions on the boat that could break out into open conflict.

“They could even kill each other,” she said.

Several hours later, another Reuters team spotted the migrants’ vessel again tethered to the Thai navy patrol boat. It was unclear if it had been pushed back by the Malaysians.

Veerapong said that, as of Saturday night, the boat had been turned and was heading once again in the direction of Indonesia.

Reuters
In Asian Seas, a Migrant Boat Finds Nowhere to Land - The Jakarta Globe

Malaysia launches talks
amid Asia's growing migrant
crisis
Eileen Ng, The Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | World | Sun, May 17 2015, 5:19 PM

Seek hope: A Rohingya boy looks out from his parent's shanty on the fringes of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Sunday. Malaysia is the current chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been criticized for long ignoring the plight of Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar. (AP/Joshua Paul)

Malaysia launched a series of high-level talks with its neighbors Sunday, seeking a solution to a deepening crisis in which boatloads of refugees are stranded off Southeast Asia's shores, with no country willing to take them in.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman met with his counterpart from Bangladesh, Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, ahead of meetings scheduled with the Indonesian and Thai foreign ministers in the coming days, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Boatloads of more than 2,000 members of Myanmar's ethnic Rohingya Muslim community fleeing persecution and migrants from Bangladesh trying to escape poverty have landed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in recent weeks. But thousands more are stranded at sea after a crackdown on human traffickers prompted captains and smugglers to abandon their human cargo.

Malaysia is the current chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been criticized for long ignoring the plight of the Rohingya.

On Friday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak vowed to take action as urgent calls to address the growing humanitarian crisis poured in from the United Nations, the United States and others.

"This is an issue of international and regional importance," Najib said. "We are in contact with all relevant parties, with whom we share the desire to find a solution to this crisis."

ASEAN adheres to a strict policy of non-interference, which in the past has blocked public criticism of Myanmar and critics say enables member states to commit abuses without consequences.

The U.N. has called the Rohingya one of the world's most persecuted groups. For decades, they have faced state-sanctioned discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. In the past three years, Rohingya have been targeted by violent mobs of Buddhist extremists that left hundreds dead and sparked an exodus of boat people fleeing on rickety, overcrowded vessels operated by human trafficking syndicates.

Most are trying to reach Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country that has hosted more than 45,000 Rohingya over the years but now says it can't accept any more. Indonesia and Thailand have voiced similar stances — fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants.

The Malaysian and Bangladeshi foreign ministers met in Sabah state on Borneo island Sunday as part of a pre-planned annual consultation between the two countries, the official said.

Malaysia's Anifah is also expected to meet with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on Monday and hold talks with his Thai counterpart, Gen. Tanasak Patimapragorn, in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, the official said.

Efforts were being made to meet with representatives from Myanmar, he said, without elaborating.

Myanmar's cooperation is seen as vital to solving the crisis, but its government has already cast doubt on whether it will attend a conference to be hosted by Thailand on May 29 that is to include 15 Asian nations affected by the emergency.

"We are not ignoring the migrant problem, but our leaders will decide whether to attend the meeting based on what is going to be discussed," Maj. Zaw Htay, director of the office of Myanmar's president, said Saturday. "We will not accept the allegations by some that Myanmar is the source of the problem."

He put some of the blame on Myanmar's neighbors, saying that from a humanitarian point of view, "it's sad that these people are being pushed out to sea by some countries."

An increasingly alarmed United Nations warned Friday against "floating coffins" and called on regional leaders to put human lives first. The United States urged governments not to push back new boat arrivals.

___

Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report. (**)

- See more at: Malaysia launches talks amid Asia's growing migrant crisis | The Jakarta Post
I can understand why the Rohingya's fleeing from the prosecution and fear of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, but Bangladesh? and their number is large too

 

[Aepsilons]

A good read from Japan Times,

Swelling refugee crisis prompts Malaysia to launch talks with its neighbors | The Japan Times