Rohingya’s last hope
In the spotlight, 27 November 2016
by Alex Flor
It’s good to know that the Indonesian people and their government care about the Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar). However, besides demanding for acknowledgement as citizens and improvement of their human rights situation in Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia should underline its commitment by her own means.
Hundreds, or even thousands of Rohingya refugees came by boat. Many of them were rejected by Indonesian authorizies while still at sea. Indonesian navy put them back into international waters, leaving them alone with their own fate. “They didn’t want to come to Indonesia, anyway,” a government official commented such an action in 2015, claiming that their final destination was Australia.
Others, who succeeded to reach the Indonesian coastline are kept in camps under unsatisfactory conditions. Their chances to be accepted as asylum seekers in Indonesia are close to zero, and there are no efforts by the state to prepare them for integration into the Indonesian society.
Jakarta Post, November 23, 2016
Jakarta: Rohingya’s last hope
http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2016/11/23/jakarta-rohingyas-last-hope.html
John Coyne, Head of Border Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
The security situation for 1.3 million Muslim Rohingyas living in Myanmar is becoming increasingly untenable. If this situation deteriorates much further, ASEAN can expect to be facing a mass migration crises before the year is out.
Unfortunately for the Rohingyas, the window of opportunity to prevent this humanitarian crises is rapidly closing. Put simply, if Jakarta doesn’t respond soon, it will be too late. If this crises can’t be averted through careful diplomacy, the flow of refugees from Myanmar is likely to rapidly reach a magnitude that will overwhelm the region’s capacity to respond.
For 25 years the maritime border security situation in Southeast Asia has been relatively stable. ASEAN’s geographic isolation from the Middle East, Africa and South America has served to insulate it from the mass migration crises in Europe and North America.
In early 2015, almost 25,000 Rohingyas took to boats to escape persecution from Myanmar’s Buddhist government. This mass migration flow caused a crisis across Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Over the last month, the situation for the Rohingyas has once more entered a state of rapid and deadly decline. The Myanmar government alleges that on Oct. 9 an insurgent Rohingya group launched coordinated ground assaults against several border guard posts, killing nine police officers and five soldiers.
Since the attacks, the Myanmar government has deployed large numbers of police and military forces to the Rakhine state. According to official Myanmar reporting, 69 suspected insurgents and 17 security force personnel have been killed since the attacks began.
It is alleged by international advocates that Myanmar’s government forces have shot scores of people, raped women, burned houses and stores and looted property across Rakhine state. These attacks have universally targeted the Muslim Rohingya minority. Various non-government organizations have reported that in excess of 30,000 Rohingyas are now displaced by the violence.
The 2015 Rohingya crisis demonstrated how upsurges in persecution can lead to sudden and large migration flows. The events of the past few weeks have been described by some observers as the biggest surge in violence against the Rohingya for at least four years. Bangladeshi officials are already reporting that the number of Rohingyas attempting to cross the border from Myanmar by land and sea is rising by the day. With an estimated population of 1.3 million Rohingyas in Myanmar, the potential for a mass migration crises in the region is clear. The conditions are now ripe for sparking a crisis that could see tens of thousands of people displaced across the region.
In late 2014, European nations were receiving similar warnings of the possibility of a mass migration crisis involving Syrian refugees. At the time both the European Union and many of its individual member states failed to heed the warnings and were ill prepared for the mass migration crisis that followed.
The Europeans learned that in the face of mass irregular migration, border security measures quickly fail. Europe’s 2015/2016 migration crisis clearly demonstrated that on its own a maritime blockade is not enough to contain desperate people. This is why prevention and early intervention are critical.
While well intentioned, the United Nations has had little impact on the situation on the ground. At present, the UN is lobbying the Myanmar government to allow much needed aid to be distributed in Rakhine state. With US president-elect Donald Trump’s imminent ascendancy to the Oval Office, American engagement in the Asia-Pacific is on pause and its future uncertain. The strained relations between Myanmar and China ensures that Beijing is unlikely to intervene to secure the Rohingyas’ fate. Australia’s long commitment to the Middle East and the war on terrorism have seen it walk away from the Mekong states, so is unlikely to proactively engage with Myanmar.
If the crises is be averted, help will need to come from within the ASEAN region. However, ASEAN moves far too slowly to be a real option. As the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia has a religious and regional obligation to come to the aid of the Rohingyas. If this is not enough, heading off a costly humanitarian emergency is also in Indonesia’s self-interest.
Indonesia needs to lobby for Myanmar to halt its security operations in Rakhine state as soon as possible. Furthermore, Indonesia should offer humanitarian assistance for the 30,000 displaced Rohingyas. In the longer term Jakarta will need to harness bilateral and multilateral efforts to address the persecution of the Rohingyas if a more permanent solution is to be found.
If Indonesia doesn’t act soon to end the persecution of the Rohingyas, the region may face a humanitarian crises that stretches from Rakhine state to the archipelago’s shores.
Antara, 24 November 2016
Indonesians urged to pray for and help prosecuted Rohingya
http://www.antaranews.com/en/news/108010/indonesians-urged-to-pray-for-and-help-prosecuted-rohingya
Pewarta: Fardah
Jakarta (ANTARA News) – The Rohingya ethnic group living in Myanmars Rakhine State is one of the worlds most persecuted minority groups.
The United Nations (UN) has acknowledged the tragedy and the world was well aware of it, but Rohingya people have continued to suffer more and more.
Over 1,200 homes have been razed in villages inhabited by Muslim Rohingya minority living in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar in the past six weeks, the BBC said recently, quoting Human Rights Watch.
The group has released a batch of new satellite images that showed 820 structures destroyed between November 10 and 18.
The military is conducting security operations in Rakhine but the government denies it is razing homes.
A BBC correspondent on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border spoke to fleeing Rohingya families who described what was happening in northern Rakhine as “hell on earth.”
A total of 130 people have been killed in the latest surge of violence in the country, according to the Myanmar army.
Al Jazeera reported on November 17 that the bloodshed was the most serious since hundreds were killed in communal clashes in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine in 2012.
It has exposed a lack of oversight of the military by the seven-month-old administration of Suu Kyi.
Deeply concerned about the safety and wellbeing of Rohingya civilians, the United Nations entities on Nov 18 urged the Myanmar authorities to take immediate action to address humanitarian and human rights situation.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) urged the Myanmar Government to immediately allow humanitarian actors to resume life-saving activities for some 160,000 civilians, which were suspended on October 9.
“We are urging the government of Myanmar to ensure the protection and dignity of all civilians on its territory in accordance with the rule of law and its international obligations,” UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters at the regular news briefing in Geneva.
In Indonesia, Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin has called on Muslims in Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim majority nation, to pray for Rohingya ethnic minority which has been suffering persecution by the Myanmar Buddhist community and authorities.
“We are all very concerned about the conflict. Hopefully, the number of victims would not continue to increase. Lets pray for them and those who died,” the minister pleaded in a statement recently.
The minister also offered himself to facilitate Islamic and Buddhist sides as well as academicians to help find a solution to the crisis faced by the Rohingya Muslim minority living in Rakhine State.
“We continue to closely monitor the developments in Rakhine. If needed, we are ready to help. I continuously coordinate with the Foreign Affairs Ministry which is spearheading the efforts to resolve the issue,” he commented.
The Indonesian government has not remained silent over the plight of Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar, he claimed.
Indonesia has carried out several programs and provided humanitarian assistance, particularly for education and to extend medical services to Rakhine inhabitants, he noted.
Earlier, Foreign Affairs Minister Retno LP Marsudi had also reiterated that Indonesia has been continuously keeping an eye on the conditions being faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar.
“We are monitoring closely all the developments concerning the Rohingya people,” Retno emphasized at the Presidential Palace.
She noted that the ministry has been consistently observing the developments in the region, and it is her duty to seek clarification regarding any information about the situation in Rakhine State.
“This morning, the director general of Asia Pacific and Africa held a meeting with Myanmars ambassador in Jakarta. Once again, we explained the situation to the Myanmar government, conveying all information about the situation in Rakhine State (Myanmar),” she added.
A deep concern over the situation in Rakhine State has also been voiced by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI).
The Indonesian government must do something to help stop the tragedy in Myanmar, Muhyiddin Junaidi, chairman of the international affairs of the MUI, told Republika daily on Nov 21.
Its too late in the day for the Indonesian government to study the situation in Myanmar because there were already plenty of reports about the persecution of Rohingya people, he pointed out.
Meanwhile, the Association of the Alumni of the University of Indonesia (ILUNI UI) has urged the Indonesian government to ask Myanmar to stop the systematic persecution of the Rohingya ethnic group.
“Indonesia, as the largest nation in ASEAN, should have used the regional grouping to convince Myanmar to stop this persecution and to find a comprehensive, peaceful and dignified solution to the Rohingya problem,” Arief Budhy Hardono, ILUNI UI Chairman, said in a statement.
Indonesia and Myanmar are both members of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Hardono demanded that the Myanmar government must stop this repression and begin cessation of hostilities by recognizing the Rohingya ethnic group as citizens that have the right to protection.
“We also strongly condemn the systematic persecution,” he said.
Besides, the international community must demand the Myanmar government to be responsible and respect human rights.
“It can start taking action by first revoking the Nobel Prize awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi,” he noted.
A similar view was voiced by a youth Muslim organization called Hizbullah, who has condemned the murders of tens of Rohingya Muslims, and asked for revocation of the Myanmar leaders Nobel Prize.
“Barbaric massacres committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya children, women and men are crimes against humanity that cannot be tolerated. Therefore, we strongly condemn the Myanmarese military and government for the cruelty,” Hizbullah chairman, M Anshorullah, said on Nov 21.
The Myanmar government has clearly committed a systematic genocide, something obviously against world peace, he remarked.(*)
