The Rohingya have a right to legally belong somewhere

The Nation

June 8, 2013

After all the years that Thailand has been involved with sheltering refugees from neighboring countries, one would think that our authorities' handling of sensitive humanitarian issues would have improved over time. But as a recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) suggests, Thai officials have learned little and haven't improved their overall attitude to those in vulnerable situations.

HRW has called on the Thai government to immediately end the detention under inhumane conditions of more than 1,700 ethnic Rohingya, who are being kept in overcrowded cells in immigration detention centers around the country. The statement followed the release of shocking video footage of an immigration facility in Phang Nga province, aired by ITN Channel 4 News on May 31.

“The ITN program showed 276 Rohingya men living in extremely cramped conditions in two cells resembling large cages, each designed to hold only 15 men,” HRW said in a statement. “They barely had enough room to sit. Some suffered from swollen feet and withered leg muscles due to lack of exercise. The men said they have not been let out of the cells in five months.”

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra should be reminded that in January she agreed to permit Rohingya arriving by boat from Myanmar to stay temporarily, initially for six months, until they could be safely repatriated to their places of origin or resettled to third countries. She needs to understand that she can't go around making these promises to the international community and then turn a blind eye to the appalling conduct of her officials.

Moreover, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has not been permitted to screen the Rohingya in Phang Nga. The embarrassment that would be caused by revelation of the dreadful holding conditions is likely the same reason why the government is reluctant to permit foreign governments and international organizations like the U.N. from visiting the violent deep South, where a Malay-Muslim insurgency has raged since 2004. There are just too many things to hide, like the culture of impunity and extrajudicial killings by government and pro-government officials.

Five years ago Thai security officials on the southern coast sent a boatload of Rohingya back out to sea, where many had already died. Shortly after that there was another incident in which video footage showed how Thai officials lined up Rohingya refugees in the open under a blazing sun.

In response to these back-to-back incidents, local media were brought in to report on Thai doctors and aid workers “pampering” the new wave of Rohingya boat people. But more keep coming and the end is nowhere in sight. It's nowhere in sight because no one in the region is willing to take up the issue and discuss the root cause of the migration problem, which is the statelessness of the Rohingya in Myanmar.

The Rohingya are stranded along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Southeast Asia's construct of “nation-states” has passed them by. Post-colonial governments drew up national maps, most of which were in line with boundaries left by the European powers. Neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh wants them, thus making them one of the most pitiable people in the world. And neither country seems willing to do anything about resolving the problem.

While emerging countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh seek to administer the territory within their political boundaries, they don't always want the people that come with it — especially if they are from a different cultural and linguistic stock from the ruling majority.

The stateless hilltribe people along the northern and western Thai border are not much different from the Rohingya. The only difference is that most, if not all, of the northern hilltribes have been documented, even though they might not have been granted citizenship and the privileges that come with it.

But documentation is a start. And perhaps this is where Myanmar should begin. The Rohingya issue should be about legality. It's a humanitarian crisis that stems from an unwillingness to give them legal status anywhere.