Southeast Asia Faces its Own Refugee Crisis

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage Reprint | | Print | |En español

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2015 (IPS) - As monsoons end, sailing season begins in Southeast Asia as thousands of refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh undertake treacherous boat journeys to escape persecution and marginalization, Amnesty International (AI) reported.

In recent years, tens of thousands have sailed across the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea to neighbouring countries, including Indonesia.

The majority of those fleeing are Muslim Rohingya, a religious and ethnic minority from predominately Buddhist Myanmar. Myanmar’s government disputes the Rohingya people’s status as Burmese citizens and thus enacted discriminatory policies, rendering the majority of the group stateless.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has described the Rohingya community as one of the most “excluded, persecuted, and vulnerable communities in the world.”

Exposing the scale and scope of the crisis, AI interviewed 179 asylum-seekers as well as residents and civil society organizations in a new report, Deadly Journeys: The Refugee and Trafficking Crisis in Southeast Asia.

Not only do refugees face the risk of drowning or being stranded at sea, they are also likely to run into abusive human trafficking groups, the report revealed.

“The daily physical abuse faced by Rohingya who were trapped on boats…is almost too horrific to put into words. They had escaped Myanmar, but had only traded one nightmare for another,” said AI’s Refugee Researcher Anna Shea.

Almost all interviewees experienced or witnessed repeated beatings by boat crews. People were beaten for moving, requesting food or water, and asking to use the toilet. Children were also beaten for crying, AI reported.

One 15-year-old girl said that she was beaten while the crew called her father in Bangladesh ordering ransom money of 1,700 dollars. Another 15-year-old boy discussed the systematic beatings and punishment he endured.

“In the morning you were hit three times. In the afternoon you were hit three times. At night you were hit nine times,” he stated.

“They threw us in the sea. We had to swim for hours – if we tried to hold on to the ship they would beat us. When we were nearly drowned they would take us back on the ship and beat us,” he continued.

The crew threw him into the sea 15 times, for several hours at a time.

Rohingya interviewees also described living conditions as “inhuman and degrading.”

They reported overcrowded boats and insufficient food and water supplies. Interviewees said they were forced to sit cross-legged during several week-long journeys and were given a small portion of rice per day.

Boats were also not cleaned, resulting in a foul-smelling environment. A local resident who helped rescue a boat that landed in Aceh, Indonesia noted that it smelled so badly that rescuers could not board the deck.

“The smell was from lots of people without access to toilet or shower,“ he said.

The abuse causes short and long-term health problems including muscle pain, dehydration, malnourishment, and disease, AI said.

In the report, AI urged Southeast Asian governments to act by combating trafficking, conducting search and rescue operations, and identifying safe disembarkation points.

They stated that search and rescue is not only a “humanitarian imperative,” but it is also an international legal obligation under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, whose State parties include Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Initially, governments pushed Rohingya refugee-filled boats back into sea, denying them of safe passage and disembarkation.

In May 2015, Thailand began to crackdown on trafficking. However, this led to crews abandoning their boats, stranding over 8000 refugees for weeks at open sea.

Though Indonesia and Malaysia granted shelter to the stranded Rohingya refugees, it is still unsure whether they will be permitted to stay beyond May 2016, potentially leaving them stranded once again.

“Without cooperation between governments to combat human trafficking, grave human rights abuses will again be perpetrated against some of Southeast Asia’s most vulnerable and desperate people,” Shea remarked.

According to UNHCR, in the first six months of 2015, approximately 31,000 people from Myanmar and Bangladesh made dangerous boat journeys. UNHCR also estimates that over 1100 have died at sea since 2014.

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