Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

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Very sad.

Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

LANGKAWI, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has turned away a boat with more than 500 Rohingya Muslims and Bangladeshis after providing them with fuel and provisions, a government official said Thursday.

The boat was found Wednesday off the coast of northern Penang state, just days after more than 1,000 refugees landed in nearby Langkawi island.

Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Jaafar said that Malaysia cannot afford to have immigrants flooding its shores, adding the government has treated immigrants humanely but “now it’s about time to show they are not welcome here.”

He said countries in Southeast Asian must now press Myanmar to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Thousands of migrants are still believed stranded in the Malacca Strait and surrounding waters, after captains tied to trafficking networks abandoned ships, leaving behind their human cargo.

Indonesia, which has taken 600 such refugees, turned a boat away earlier this week. But a foreign ministry spokesman denied Wednesday it had a “push back” policy, saying the vessel strayed into its waters on accident. Arrmanatha Nasir told reporters the migrants were looking for neighboring Malaysia.

“We have to help refugees who need assistance and direct them to where they want to go,” he said. “It goes against our principle to chase away refugee boats that enter our territory.”

Southeast Asia, which for years tried to quietly ignore the plight of Myanmar’s 1.3 million Rohingya, now finds itself caught in a spiraling humanitarian crisis that in many ways it helped create.

In the last three years, more than 100,000 members of the Muslim minority have boarded ships, fleeing persecution, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

No countries want them, fearing that accepting a few would result in an unstoppable flow of poor, uneducated migrants. But governments at the same time respected the wishes of Myanmar at regional gatherings and avoided discussions of state-sponsored discrimination against the Rohingya.

Denied citizenship by national law, the Muslims are effectively stateless. They have for years faced attacks by the military and extremist Buddhist mobs. They have limited access to education or adequate health care and cannot move around freely.

“Towing migrants out to sea and declaring that they aren’t your problem anymore is not a solution to a wider regional crisis,” said Charles Santiago, a member of parliament in Malaysia.

Increasingly over the years, Rohingya boarding boats in the Bay of Bengal have been joined by neighboring Bangladeshi, most of them seeking an escape from poverty.

For those fleeing, the first stop, up until recently, was Thailand, where migrants were held in jungle camps until their families could raise hefty ransoms so they could continue onward. Recent security crackdowns forced the smugglers to change tactics, instead holding people on large ships parked offshore.

Initially they were shuttled to shore on smaller boats after their “ransoms” were paid. But as agents and brokers on land got more and more spooked by arrests not just of traffickers but also police and politicians, they went into hiding.

That created a bottleneck, with migrants stuck on boats for weeks, even months, at a time.

Chris Lewa of the non-profit Arakan Project estimates as many as 6,000 may still be on boats, waiting to find a chance to land or hoping to be rescued.

In recent days, captains have started abandoning their ships, leaving passengers to fend for themselves.

The United Nations has pleaded for countries in the region to keep their borders open and help rescue those stranded.

Several navies said they were scouring the seas.

Capt. Chayut Navespootikorn of the Royal Thai Navy of Operation Fleet Area 3, said several boats and aircraft had been deployed to search the country’s territorial waters, but nothing has turned up.

No rescues have been made by other navies either.

The condition of people on the ship off Penang was not immediately known, said Zafar Ahmad, who heads the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization of Malaysia: “We are hearing their plight is desperate.”

The information was corroborated by another person with knowledge of the situation. That person was not authorized to speak to the media and asked to remain anonymous. Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

I’ve been following this news for last two days. Its really sad and unfortunate. So many real life stories of human smuggling from libya to Malaysia. And this one is terrible too.
Some of the European countries are taking more interest in resolving this issue. I hope they succeed. Even though most Rohingyans are muslims, I have absolutely no hope from any muslim country to step in.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

They hv no food, nothing.. they are dying..

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/world/asia/burmese-rohingya-bangladeshi-migrants-andaman-sea.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Migrants From Myanmar, Shunned by Malaysia, Are Spotted Adrift in Andaman SeaBy THOMAS FULLER and JOE COCHRANEMAY 14, 2015

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Rohingya migrants passed food supplies dropped by a Thai helicopter to others aboard a boat drifting off the southern island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman Sea on Thursday.[COLOR=#999999]CreditChristophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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IN THE ANDAMAN SEA OFF THAILAND — A wooden fishing boat carrying several hundred desperate migrants from Myanmarwas spotted adrift in the Andaman Sea between Thailand and Malaysia on Thursday, part of an exodus in which thousands of people have taken to the sea in recent weeks but no country has been willing to take them in.
Cries of “Please help us! I have no water!” rose from the boat as a vessel carrying journalists approached. “Please give me water!”
The green and red fishing boat, packed with men, women and children squatting on the deck with only plastic tarps to protect them from the sun, had been turned away by the Malaysian authorities on Wednesday, passengers said.
They said that they had been on the boat for three months, and that the boat’s captain and crew had abandoned them six days ago. Ten passengers died during the voyage and their bodies were thrown overboard, the passengers said.
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Rohingya Refugees From Myanmar Have Been Persecuted for DecadesMAY 12, 2015
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Indonesia Turns Away a Migrant Ship as the Region Grapples With an InfluxMAY 12, 2015
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Muslims Flee to Malaysia and Indonesia by the HundredsMAY 11, 2015
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“I am very hungry,” said a 15-year-old boy, Mohamed Siraj, who said he was from western Myanmar. “Quickly help us please.”
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PLAY VIDEO[COLOR=#CCCCCC]|1:00Myanmar Migrants Spotted in Andaman Sea
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Myanmar Migrants Spotted in Andaman SeaA wooden fishing boat carrying several hundred migrants from Myanmar was seen adrift west of the Thai mainland on Thursday.
By Thomas Fuller on Publish DateMay 14, 2015. Photo by Thomas Fuller/The New York Times.
It was unclear Thursday whether they would receive that help, however, despite the presence of a Thai Navy vessel, which arrived after being alerted to the boat’s presence by The New York Times.
Instead, the presence of an estimated 6,000 to 20,000 migrants at sea, fleeing ethnic persecution in Myanmar and poverty in Bangladesh, has created a crisis across the region with countries pointing fingers at one another and declining to take responsibility themselves.
Most of the migrants were thought to be headed to Malaysia, but after more than 1,500 came ashore in Malaysia and Indonesia in the past week, both countries declared their intention to turn away any more boats carrying migrants.
Thai officials have not articulated an official policy since the crisis began, beyond convening a regional conference to discuss the problem this month. Thailand is not known to have allowed any of the migrants to land there.
The Indonesian Navy turned away a boat with thousands of passengers on Tuesday, urging it on to Malaysia, while the Malaysian authorities turned away two boats with a total of at least 800 passengers on Wednesday.
The Thai naval vessel that approached the migrant ship here on Thursday kept its distance, its commander, Lt. Cmdr. Veerapong Nakprasit, saying the migrants had “entered illegally.” At one point the Thai sailors tossed packages of instant noodles to the boat, though the migrants appeared to have no means to cook them.
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2015/05/14/migrants-map/e98f5c171bbe70b280b2aa718b1f795a268a8ba2/0515-for-webMIGRANTSmap-300.png

400 MILES
CHINA

BANGLADESH
INDIA

MYANMAR
LAOS

[RIGHT]RAKHINE**STATE[/RIGHT]
THAILAND

Bay of Bengal
CAMBODIA

Andaman**Sea
VIETNAM

Area of****detail
Location of
boat Thursday
evening

South**China Sea
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SINGAPORE

LANGKAWI
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By The New York Times

“What we have now is a game of maritime Ping-Pong,” said Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Bangkok. “It’s maritime Ping-Pong with human life. What’s the endgame? I don’t want to be too overdramatic, but if these people aren’t treated and brought to shore soon we are going to have a boat full of corpses.”
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The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has asked regional governments to conduct search and rescue operations to no avail. “It’s a potential humanitarian disaster,” said Jeffrey Savage, a senior protection officer with the agency.
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Many of the migrants are believed to have been abandoned by their traffickers with little food or water.
Indonesia’s chief military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Fuad Basya, said Thursday that the military would “push back any boat that wants to enter Indonesian waters without permission, including those of boat people like the Rohingya.”
After Malaysian officials turned back a boat with about 500 people off Penang Island on Wednesday, Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi said, “What do you expect us to do?”
“We have been very nice to the people who broke into our border,” he told The Associated Press. “We have treated them humanely, but they cannot be flooding our shores like this. We have to send the right message that they are not welcome here.”
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A Rohingya migrant ate food dropped by helicopter.CreditChristophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMalaysian officials reached by The Times on Thursday declined to comment.
Continue reading the main storyTens of thousands of Rohingya, a stateless Muslim ethnic group, have fled Myanmar over the last several years, most going to Malaysia or Bangladesh. But the exodus over the last few weeks seemed to have caught everyone by surprise.
There is no single reason for the spike in departures from Myanmar and Bangladesh, says Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, a human rights group that tracks migration in the Andaman Sea. For the Rohingya, an accumulation of setbacks have taken their toll, she said, including the tightening of fishing permits, which has hit the Rohingya monetarily and nutritionally, and the government’s insistence that its one million Rohingya residents are not citizens.
“It’s a combination of things,” Ms. Lewa said. “Their lives have become worse and worse.”
The fact that so many are at sea at once, however, may be in part an unintended consequence of the Thai crackdown on human trafficking. After the discovery of a mass grave this month believed to contain the bodies of 33 Burmese and Bangladeshi migrants, officials raided several smuggling camps in southern Thailand and charged dozens of police officers and senior officials with being complicit in the trade.
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Rohingya migrants sat on a boat drifting in Thai waters.CreditChristophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe camps were a way station where migrants were often detained in prisonlike conditions until they or their family could pay the smugglers for passage to Malaysia. As horrid as those camps were, without them, the migrants have been stuck at sea, their traffickers afraid to set foot in Thailand.
“Their business model has been interrupted by the operations in Thailand,” Mr. Lowry said. “They will be back eventually — smuggling in trafficking is very lucrative — but they are waiting for now.”
Migrants generally pay about $1,800 each for passage to Malaysia, along with the promise of a job when they arrive, Ms. Lewa said.
But they are frequently shaken down for more payments along the way and many never make it to Malaysia, a Muslim country that until recently had tacitly allowed the backdoor migration of Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Interviews with passengers aboard a boat that washed ashore on the northern tip of Sumatra Island, Indonesia, on Sunday provided a glimpse of the brutal conditions they faced at sea and the desperation that drove them to make the risky voyage.
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Passengers told of waiting on the boat for months before it sailed as the smugglers wanted to pack it as full as possible with paying passengers.
Continue reading the main story[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/11/07/world/asia/07myanmar-ss-slide-O02E/07myanmar-ss-slide-O02E-master180.jpg

How Myanmar and Its Neighbors Are Responding to the Rohingya Crisis](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/13/world/asia/15rohingya-explainer.html)Most were forced to remain beneath deck in the hold, squatting no more than an inch from the person in front of them. Every other day, they were fed bits of rice and noodles and small amounts of water. A hole in the floor, opening directly into the ocean, served as a toilet.
The passengers prayed or talked quietly, their whispers broken by the occasional sound of others vomiting from seasickness.
“There was no singing, only crying,” said Muhammed Kashim, a 44-year-old Bangladeshi.
Seven days into the voyage, the ship’s Thai captain abruptly stopped the vessel at sea, they said. The next day, gunmen arrived on a speedboat, boarded the ship and robbed migrants of their valuables.
The captain and crew fled with the gunmen, abandoning the ship.
Mahammed Hashim, 25, a Rohingya from the Kyauktaw District in Rakhine State, said the risks of traveling in a rickety wooden ship with little food or water were less than those of remaining in Myanmar.
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Rohingya migrants swam to collect food supplies dropped by a Thai army helicopter.CreditChristophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“We assumed that danger would come, but there was no other way,” he said. “We were living in a country that is more dangerous than the sea.”
They were lucky. A day later the boat grounded in Indonesia, whose policy is not to turn back ships once they have made landfall.
The 584 passengers, including 59 children and 86 women, five of them pregnant, will have the opportunity to apply for refugee status with the United Nations refugee agency, a process that is expected to take months. For now they are being housed at a government compound in Paya Bateung, in Aceh Province, where they sleep on concrete floors but have blankets, food and water.
The Rohingya, effectively stateless, have a reasonable chance at asylum. But the 208 Bangladeshis in the group would probably be considered economic migrants who, denied the right to work in Indonesia, would eventually choose to return home, Mr. Savage said.
But Mahammed Jahangir Hussein, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi, says that is not an option. His father sold a house and farmland to raise the $3,250 he paid for the voyage and a promised job in Malaysia.
“If the Indonesian government says we cannot work, all the men here are saying let’s work in another country,” he said. “There’s nothing back home for us.”
Asked about his future, he waved his arms toward the migrants gathered around him and up at the scruffy concrete building he had just moved into.
“This is my future,” he said.
Thomas Fuller reported from a boat in the Andaman Sea, and Joe Cochrane from Paya Bateung, Indonesia. Austin Ramzy contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

I think kuffar will help them more then the rulers of socalled muslims countries :frowning:

Is it not more important to help such people rather then doing expensive renovation on harmain(i wrote renovation not expansion), this is where even ulema fail to communicate the actual ahkam of islam over this, one of the reasons is due to thinking in nationalist terms and not feel for the ummah as a whole.

Is there any way individuals can help? through islamic relief etc?

And same goes for thar , crisis is still there but no media attention

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

A small BBC vid of highlighting who Rhohingiyans are?!

[click below]

And their plight even after getting help

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

So FINALLY… UN is waking up, still yawning though.. about time!

(http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/28/uk-myanmar-un-idUKKBN0OD2KD20150528)

U.N. council has first-ever briefing on rights in Myanmar

UNITED NATIONS | BY LOUIS CHARBONNEAU

Plywood with the words ‘‘We are Myanmar Rohingya’’ is seen in an abandoned boat which carried Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants from Thailand, found off the coast near the city of Kuta Binje, Indonesia’s Aceh Province May 20, 2015.******
REUTERS/BEAWIHARTA

******The United Nations Security Council on Thursday held its first closed-door briefing on the human rights situation in Myanmar, focussing on the dire situation of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, the United States and council diplomats said.
U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein briefed the council via video link in a meeting that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power welcomed on her Twitter feed as a “historic first” for the 15-nation body, in which Zeid painted a “grim picture of discrimination against Rohingya.”
“Zeid gave a powerful briefing on the dire situation and ‘institutional discrimination’ faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar,” a council diplomat present at the meeting told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

**“They are often violently abused by smugglers, hundreds recently dying at sea,” the diplomat said, summarizing Zeid’s remarks about the country formerly called Burma. “This demands a comprehensive response. Must look at root causes.”
**Power described the conditions for Rohingyas as “troubling and inhumane.”

During the meeting Power “underscored that while much progress has been made inMyanmar, some are using newfound freedoms to organise hatred, foment violence, and facilitate the persecution of vulnerable Rohingya,” another diplomat said.
She also called for the “immediate lifting of restrictions on the freedom of movement of the more than 140,000 Rohingya trapped in IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, with little access to humanitarian support,” the second diplomat added.
Council members welcomed a crisis meeting in Bangkok aimed at addressing Southeast Asia’s migrant crisis.
A delegate from Russia complained that the Security Council was not the appropriate forum for human rights, a diplomat said.
China, Myanmar’s traditional ally, said it was an internal matter for the country’s authorities but expressed concern about the situation.

More than 3,000 migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh have landed in Indonesia and Malaysia in recent weeks since Thailand launched a crackdown on human trafficking gangs earlier this month. About 2,600 are believed to be still adrift on abandoned boats, relief agencies have said.
Many of those who have landed ashore belong to Myanmar’s 1.1 million-member Rohingya Muslim minority who live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state.

Recently Zeid said the Rohingyas’ situation was “one of the principal motivators of these desperate maritime movements.”

The Myanmar government regards most Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They enjoy few rights and have suffered violence from members of the Buddhist majority over the past few years.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang)

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

What would all the relief do when they are dying at the shores of indonesia and malaysia? We all can give money but these countries have to allow them to at least come on shore.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

How many are there in total… People can earn for themselves once they are settled…they cud be a burden for just few months… Pictures are dreadful… Some pact for some ratio to take them in ..in the ratio of existing rohingyas population but something…some sort of consensus…nd a lot of conscience…

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Isn’t Bangladesh should be their original choice?

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Bangladesh is not allowing them in. While Bengalis themselves keep on flooding neighbouring countries, they do not offer the same privileges to others.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

http://s22.postimg.org/3q8pftvn5/Obama_on_Rohingya.jpg

http://s15.postimg.org/n1bsi7cjv/Untitled.jpg

http://s24.postimg.org/sulh4j7f9/USDOTURDU_banner.jpg

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Please keep us update from now on this crisis.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Such minorities have potential to become nuisance in future like Palenstinian in Jordan :slight_smile:

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Bangladesh’s refugee policies | Opinion

…The largest group of refugees in Bangladesh are currently the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar. Following constitutional discrimination against them through citizenship laws that have particularly stopped recognising Rohingyas as Myanmar citizens, and their institutional ethnic cleansing since the late 1970s, a total exceeding 300,000 Rohingyas have found themselves across the border in Bangladesh[3]. According to UNHCR, however, only 10% of them are receiving any kind of help from the government. The rest remain undocumented in make-shift camps with little to no access to food, shelter, healthcare etc…

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

This is quite a burden on Bangladesh. They do have to take care of their own.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Quite mean spirited to take the angle that these “monirities” could be a future source of problem. We are talking life or death situation here. Some compassion is called for in thought.

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I don’t know who the nuisance is in this case.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

Definately not Bangladeshis :slight_smile:

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

i won’t consider the rohingyas either who are stateless for the past many decades.

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Re: Rohingya Refugees Denied By Malaysia As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens

for sure, neither are they

India has turned blind eye but what about Pakistan?
Why hasn’t Pakistan offered anything?