UNHCR wary of Rohingya exodus

BDNews24

January 14, 2013

The UN Refugee agency says Rohingyas are fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh in large numbers.

Thousands of Muslim Rohingyas are fleeing Myanmar’s Rakhine (former Arakan) state or their temporary shelters in neighbouring Bangladesh, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

More than 2,000 Rohingyas have left the region on smugglers’ boats in the first week of the year, the UNHCR said in a briefing at their Geneva headquarters at the weekend.

A statement has now been issued on the briefing by the UNHCR.

The UNHCR says the most likely destination of these Rohingyas are countries in south-east Asia.

But police in the Indian state of West Bengal bordering Bangladesh say they have nabbed a few Rohingyas who entered from Bangladesh at the weekend.

They said during questioning that they were heading for the troubled Indian northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim majority state.

Earlier, some Rohingyas had been intercepted in northeast India’s Manipur and Tripura states last year. But police say they were only in transit through these states and would prefer some parts of India where Muslims were in a majority.

The UNHCR says that an estimated 13,000 people had left the Bay of Bengal on smugglers’ boats in 2012 and at least 485 are still missing or believed to be dead following four reported incidents of boats sinking.

“It is unclear how many actually make it to their final destinations, where they often risk arrest, detention and possible refoulement through deportation to Myanmar [Burma],” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in the Geneva briefing, according to a statement released later by the agency.

He was referring to an international customary law of non-refoulement that says migrants should not be returned to countries where they could be subject to persecution or human rights abuses.

The Rakhine state in western Myanmar witnessed severe sectarian violence last year between local Buddhist Rakhines and Rohingya Muslims.

The United Nations estimates that more than 100 people were killed and more than 115,000 displaced in clashes beginning in June.

Tensions have somewhat eased now, but tens of thousands of people, mostly Rohingya Muslims, still to live in overcrowded camps in the state where food and other essentials are scarce.

About 700 Rohingya migrants were rescued from alleged human traffickers in southern Thailand last week.

The migrants said they had travelled to Thailand as part of their journey to a third country, Malaysia, but the Thai authorities plans to deport the group back to Myanmar.

Edwards urged countries in Southeast Asia to keep their borders open to Rohingya migrants and others seeking asylum.

“UNHCR continues to seek access to individuals arriving by boat who are arrested and detained by government authorities,” he said, adding that the refugee agency had asked Thai authorities for access to newly-arrived migrants from Burma but were still waiting for a response.

An estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims live in Burma, mostly in Arakan State, according to UN estimates. The government does not grant them citizenship or recognise them as an official ethnic group, and although many Rohingya families have lived in the country for generations, locals often view them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh, Rohingya Muslims are now unwelcome as Dhaka wants the global community to pressurise Myanmar to accommodate the Rohingyas rather than pushing an overcrowded Bangladesh to accept more refugees. Nearly half a million Rohingyas entered Bangladesh in two phases of mass migration – in 1978-9 and 1991-2.

In July last year, the Bangladesh government asked aid groups to stop helping the Rohingyas fleeing from violence in Burma.