Southeast Asia must send a "very strong message" to Burma to stop oppressing its Rohingya minority, who are part of a surge in boat people raising fears of a regional humanitarian crisis, a Malaysian government official said on Thursday.
Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said Southeast Asia's growing refugee problem was due in large part to Burma's treatment of Rohingya, a Muslim minority that faces state discrimination and has been targeted in recent sectarian violence.
"Of course, there is a problem back home in Myanmar [Burma] with the way they treat the Rohingya people," Wan Junaidi told AFP.
"So that is why we need to send a very strong message to Myanmar that they need to treat their people with humanity. They need to be treated like humans, and cannot be so oppressive."
Malaysia said this week it would turn away boats bearing desperate migrants from Burma and Bangladesh unless they are in imminent danger of sinking, following in the footsteps of neighbouring Indonesia.
At least 2,000 boat people have been rescued, swum to shore or turned away in Malaysia and Indonesia since last weekend.
Migrants groups warn that repelling boats could amount to a death sentence for people already at risk from starvation and disease after long weeks at sea, with recent arrivals saying many of their fellow passengers had died on the sea passage, their bodies thrown overboard.
Migrants-rights advocates also say thousands more men, women and children are believed stuck out at sea or abandoned by smugglers, who are trying to evade capture after a Thai police crackdown disrupted people-smuggling routes.
Malaysia already has tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees who are drawn to the country's relative prosperity and the fact that it is Muslim-majority.
"We cannot keep being the only ones responsible for taking them in," Wan Junaidi said.
He expects the issue to be taken up this year in further meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Malaysia is this year's chair of ASEAN — which also includes Burma, officially known as Myanmar.
ASEAN members are forbidden from interfering in each other's internal affairs, but Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said recently the Rohingya problem was becoming an "international" one that needed to be discussed.
More than 1.3 million Rohingya — viewed by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities — live in Burma's western Arakan [Rakhine] State.
They are essentially stateless, with Buddhist-majority Burma denying them citizenship and treating them as unwanted foreigners.
Wan Junaidi also took a shot at Bangladesh, another major source of migrants to Southeast Asia.
"Many come from Bangladesh. So what is happening in Bangladesh? Is that not supposed to be a democratic country? It seems there is a serious problem there," he said.
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Meanwhile in Thailand, nearly 200 migrants detained since the Thai government launched its recent crackdown against human trafficking in the country's deep south will be prosecuted for entering the country illegally, police said on Thursday.
In the last fortnight Thai police have rounded up more than 250 Burmese Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants following the discovery of dozens of graves in secret jungle camps run by people smugglers.
Many were abandoned in desperate conditions in the remote southern jungle bordering Malaysia after smugglers fled following the crackdown.
"Police have already indicted 187 on illegal entry charges … so those cases are being processed now," deputy national police chief Aek Angsananont told AFP from southern Thailand.
He added that a committee of officials and police were scrutinising whether 63 others are victims of human trafficking.
Rights groups have long urged Thailand to offer asylum to Rohingya migrants fleeing persecution in western Myanmar, something Bangkok has so far resisted.
Those caught being smuggled through Thailand are usually arrested as illegal immigrants and taken to detention centres where they languish, sometimes for years.
Some have been deported back to the Burmese border where rights groups say they routinely fall again into the hands of traffickers.
In recent months Thailand has said genuine victims of human trafficking — as opposed to economic migrants — will not be prosecuted.
But the authorities have not yet made clear whether asylum or permanent sanctuary will be offered.
The country's junta chief, Prayut Chan-o-cha, has mooted the idea of temporary camps for migrants.
But any camps would likely be immensely unpopular with many Thais who fear the country becoming more of a magnet for migrants from poorer neighbouring countries.
Authorities have been at pains to show Thailand is serious about tackling people smuggling after years of accusations that they turn a blind eye to — and are even complicit in — the trade.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have braved the dangerous sea crossing to southern Thailand from Arakan State in recent years, with many headed for Malaysia and beyond.
Many die at sea, but large numbers have ended up in remote camps across southern Thailand where traffickers demand up to US$3,000 from relatives and friends for their release.
Thailand's crackdown appears to have disrupted that trade, with smugglers abandoning migrant-filled vessels at sea, some of which have washed up on the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia in recent days.
http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/malaysia-calls-on-burma-to-stop-oppressing-rohingyas/
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