(caption: Rohingya refugees, who are fleeing ethnic violence in Burma, were detained by Indian police on Neil Island before being taken back to their “unseaworthy” boats and “escorted” back to Burmese waters.)
Himaya Quasem
Asia Times Online
April 19, 2013
PHUKET - In a
narrow, damp alley at the heart of this bustling tourist hotspot sits a row of
tin-roofed shacks. Hidden from view, they house Rohingya Muslims who have fled
sectarian bloodshed in neighboring Myanmar.
Described by the
United Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the
Rohingya - including women and children - have been fleeing the country by boat
in growing numbers to escape communal rioting, which has killed an estimated
200 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
Although Myanmar
has been widely praised for adopting democratic reforms after years of
isolation, a recent spate of ethnic clashes has raised fresh concerns about its
stability.
Last month,
Buddhist mobs were locked in deadly clashes with Muslims, burning homes and
mosques, in the central part of the country. The carnage followed similar
sectarian violence between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in western
Myanmar last year.
Denied citizenship
by the authorities, the stateless Rohingya - who are categorized by the United
Nations as a religious and linguistic minority from western Myanmar but widely
viewed inside the country as illegal Bengali migrants - seek sanctuary in
neighboring countries.
Some end up in
parts of Thailand, including Phuket, which is better known for its sun-drenched
beaches and raucous nightlife. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of a shack on
the outskirts of Phuket town, Ismail, not his real name, tells a story of
suffering and abuse that is a far cry from the carefree domain of the happy
holidaymaker.
"I saw my
neighbors' house being burnt to the ground," said the 47-year-old
fisherman, recalling the gruesome scenes he witnessed during the violence in
Rakhine state. "I could find no sign of my neighbors after that. People
were being shot and stabbed. I saw a small child being hacked down like a
sapling."
The conflict
erupted in June amid reports that a young Rakhine Buddhist woman had been raped
and murdered by Rohingya men. As retaliatory attacks spiraled out of control,
entire villages were razed, leaving an estimated 125,000 people homeless, most
of them Rohingya.
A state of
emergency was declared, which briefly stemmed the bloodshed, but a fresh wave
of violence broke out in October. This time it was not clear what sparked the
clashes. Human rights groups have accused the Myanmar security forces of
tacitly supporting Rakhine Buddhist outrages against the Rohingya as part of a
policy to drive them out of the country.
The bloodletting
certainly prompted Ismail to leave. His boat was destroyed in the rioting and
he could no longer feed his family, so he decided to find work abroad. Along
with 63 others, he boarded a rickety boat that sailed for 12 days, sometimes
through storms, before nearing the Thai coast.
Ismail said the
Thai navy captured them and sold them to people smugglers who took them by
truck to a camp in southern Thailand. "We were stuffed into a small house
like cattle. I had no idea where I was or what was going on."
He lived on
mouthfuls of rice scooped from a single large bowl he shared with the other
captives. They slept in a cramped room nextto the only toilet, which was a
fetid hole in the ground covered by a sheet, he said. Those were the least of
Ismail's worries. The men who were holding him demanded 40,000 baht (US$1,400)
as a "fee" for entering Thailand.
"Some days,
without any reason, they would grab me, tie my arms and legs and lay me flat on
my stomach," he said. "Then, they started hitting me on my back and
legs with heated metal rods and rope. After three or four blows I would pass
out."
Ismail understood
that unless he could produce the money, the beatings would not stop. His
captors allowed him to contact a fellow Rohingya living in Phuket, who managed
to raise some of the funds. The rest came from his wife, who is still in
Myanmar. To save her husband's life, she sold a cow and sent the money to his
captors via a shadowy network of brokers who took a cut, Ismail said.
After 24-days in
the camp, his ordeal ended and he was sent by bus to Phuket, where he is now
living illegally. Down the road from where Ismail lives is a government-run shelter
housing children who have recently arrived in Thailand by sea.
"We were on
the boat for days without food, we just had a small amount of water to
drink," one of the boys told this writer. "The youngest among us is
four years old."
Although Thailand
has provided temporary protection to Rohingya, the government does not register
them as refugees. Instead, it adheres to an official policy of "helping
on" boat people to a third destination by providing them with food, water
and assistance to continue their perilous journey.
But the Thai Navy
has been accused of abuses, like the ones that Ismail describes. These also
include shooting at boatloads of Rohingya and selling others to human
traffickers. The Thai government has said it will look into the allegations.
The situation for
Rohingya heading to Bangladesh and Malaysia is also far from ideal. An
estimated 200,000 Rohingya languish in squalid, unofficial camps on the
Bangladeshi coast and only around 28,000 of them have been registered as
refugees. After violence erupted in Rakhine, Bangladesh turned away boatloads
of fleeing Rohingya.
While Malaysia
takes in Rohingya who arrive at its shores, the country is not a signatory to
the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. This means asylum seekers are treated as
illegal migrants, making it difficult for them to secure formal work.
Back in Myanmar,
tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya living in overcrowded and unsanitary
camps face food shortages and the threat of disease because the government has
restricted the flow of aid, said Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil
Robertson.
However, there is
little public support for the Rohingya in Myanmar, said Chris Lewa, head of
human rights organization the Arakan Project, which specializes in the minority
group. "One key reason is religion," she added. "There is a
strong anti-Muslim discourse here."
Those simmering
tensions bubbled to the surface again last month when an apparent argument
between a Muslim gold shop owner and Buddhist customers provided the first
spark for deadly clashes in the central city of Meikhtila which killed around
43 and left 12,000 homeless, mostly Muslims.
The latest violence
against Muslims, most of whom were not Rohingya, and Buddhists represents a
challenge for the nation's democratic reform progress.
"Who will be
next?" said Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American
University in Washington, DC. "This kind of ethnic and religious violence
is a slippery slope for a country at such a juncture."
Many of the
Rohingya are just the latest of generations who have lived in Myanmar. Ahmed,
who researched the group for his bookThe Thistle and the Drone, said the
Rohingya should be granted citizenship. Such a move would bolster Myanmar's
democratic "legitimacy", he added.
"Whether they
can rise above issues of race and religion to be a united and democratic [Myanmar]
will be their first and most important test."
Himaya Quasem, a
former reporter for the Sunday Mail, is a Singapore-based journalist.
Comments