Burmese citizens of foreign countries may return

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 16:55 Mizzima News

(Mizzima) – Burmese who are now citizens of foreign countries and living overseas will be allowed to return home and reclaim citizenship, local media reported Tuesday. A requirement is that they relinquish their foreign citizenship.

After President Thein Sein invited Burmese citizens living in foreign countries to return home, members of the Thee Lay Thee traditional dance troupe including Gozilla, Sein Thee, Zee Thee and traditional dancer Chaw Su Myo returned on September 11, 2011. Photo: Mizzima

Myanmar Newsweek reported on Tuesday that the re-application process would require Burmese to give up their foreign citizenship as certified by a Burmese embassy abroad, Minister of Immigration and Population Khin Yi was quoted as saying, according to the Xinhua news agency. Dual citizenship of nationals is not allowed in Burma.

In August last year,  President U Thein Sein introduced a new policy after his government took office, saying, “Any individuals and organizations in the nation that have different views from the government should not take account of disagreements,” and he invited them to work with the government for common goals in the national interest.

He said, “Myanmar citizens, living abroad for some reasons, can return home if they have not committed any crime.”

In response to his announcement, many exiled Burmese have since returned home, including prominent activists, academics, entertainers and officials who actively opposed the former military government. Others, however, have said they do not trust the sincerity of the newly installed government and want more guarantees before returning home.

Source: Mizzima News

Rohingya joints European Burma Network (EBN) Meeting

Thursday, 23 February 2012 14:29

Chittagong, Bangladesh: Rohingya attended European Burma Network (EBN) meeting in Brussels, Belgium on February 18-19, according to Tun Khin, the President of Burmese Rohingya Organization, UK (BROUK).

BROUK delegations with European Burma Network (EBN) members after meeting in Brussels

“We also met with European Officials from European Parliament and European Commission in the meeting.” 

The Rohingya -- BROUK President Tun Khin (aka) Ziaul Gaffar and its Education and Cultural Secretary Mohamed Siddique -- attended the EBN meeting. The EBN is working for campaign together in Europe and has 15 organisations’ representatives from 10 countries to promote Democracy and Human Rights. BROUK officially become a member of EBN September.

The meeting was facilitated by Jared Genser, the President of Washington based Freedom Now Law firm.

At the meeting the speakers had briefed the following topics --- Soe Aung, the representative of Forum for Democracy in Burma, briefed current situation and change in Burma; Nant Bwa Bwa Phan, Karen National Union representative, updated situation about KNU; Tun Khin  the President, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, briefed current situation of Rohingya people of Arakan;  Ben Rogers, East Asia Team Leader ,Christian Solidarity Worldwide, briefed recent visit to Burma and Kachin State; Wai Hnin  Pwint Thon, the Campaign Officer,  Buma Campaign UK, briefed update and perspective of 88 Generation Students and Neil, the Head of EU policy and Development, Open Society Institute-Brussels, briefed current Burma discussion within European Union.

Mohamed Siddique , Tun Khin and European Commission Principal Adminstrator South-East Asia ,European External Action Service

Tun Khin, mentioned human rights violations against Rohingya people and pinpointed the denial of citizenship rights and ethnic rights of Rohingya in Burma. All EBN members have agreed on action plans to raise the plight of Rohingya issues and 1982 citizenship law which was targeted to get rid of Rohingya people.

"I am very glad that BROUK is being a member of EBN where we had a good opportunity to raise our suffering people's situation in International Organisations. Recently releasing of high profile political prisoners have shown that international community pressure is working on Burma. It is high time, international community have to push to the regime to stop human rights violations in ethnic areas particularly in Rohingya areas where Rohingyas are facing serious discrimination," said Tun Khin.

BROUK delegation also briefed current situation of Rohingya people in "Round table discussion on political and human rights situation in Burma" at European Parliament on February 20, organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

“I exposed about discrimination on Rohingya people by the military regime in Arakan at the discussion meeting and CSW east Asia Team Leader Ben Rogers mentioned about his recent visit and situation about Kachin people where Directorate -General for External Policies of the European Union (Asia, Australia and New Zealand) and other staffs from European external service Units were attended at the discussion meeting,” said Tun Khin.

CSW East Asia Team Leader Ben Rogers , CSW EU Liason Office Sofia  and Tun Khin, the President of BROUK at European Parliament

BROUK delegation met on February 21 with Andreas LIST who is Principal administrator of South-East Asia at the European Commission organized by Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

“We had valuable meetings in European and Parliament and European Commission in last two days. I have mentioned that the current changes are not genuine change. If there is genuine change, the regime has to stop ethnic cleansing in ethnic areas including Rohingya areas where basic human rights were denied. It might be just to ease sanctions from the western countries and it will be too early to life sanctions,” said the BROUK President.

“We have mentioned European officials that we just want our lost rights which are ethnic rights and citizenship rights. We want to live in our homeland with dignity and peace. We want to live with our other ethnic brothers and sisters of Burma with harmony and working together to develop our federal union of Burma. We really welcome EU continued efforts for the Human Rights and Democracy for Burma. Please raise with the regime our long time suffering Rohingya people’s issue. Instead of protecting our Rohingya people, the regime is practising more human rights violations in Rohingya areas. So international community have to protect us as we are human beings," said BROUK delegations.

Source: Kaladan Press Network

Burma: Homeland Confiscations Continue in Arakan

By RARC,

Early in January of 2012, a military division( Sa-Ka-Kha-9) based near the ancient Falom village seized about 50 houses that had been built at the village's edge. It is one of 36 Rohingyan (a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority) villages in the Kyauktaw township in the western Burmese Arakan state along the Kaladan River.

These lands had been re-bought from military by Falom villagers. For 17 years, until re-buying the land, their village had consisted of 280 houses, some farming lands and the mosque were demolished by military in 1995.

In recent years, the military sold-back some of these lands to the villagers. Villagers rebuilt about 50 houses, with more in construction.
During the mid-1995, the military forces led by sub-captain Mya Hlaing attacked villagers and drove them into the jungle. Dozens of villagers were detained and a few were brutally killed. The jungle was too deep and rough for the displaced villagers to live in.
Some of them went to other Rohingyan villages, some returned to stay around the graveyard of Falom village. The rest were settled near Namaungnya village.

In its latest attack, the military doesn't care that villagers have official papers for the land they bought back.
One Falom villager, Mr. Noor who has taken refuge in Australia, has approached Rohingya organisations to highlight his village's issue.
He said the military division responsible for the latest attack established itself near the village in about 1993 and forcefully occupied the village and lands in 1995.

Beside the division expanded its territory, it's using new techniques to exploit money from villagers.

Despite promises from Burma's military-backed civilian government to end repressive policies towards Rohingyan people — such as arbitrary fines, “Muslim free zones” and extensive jail sentences — nothing has yet changed.

The fact is that the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party and the people of majority ethnic group within the Arakan state do not recognise the existence of the Rohingya people and they are still hostile towards them.
[For more information, Mr.Noor can be contacted at +(61) 4 6975 6116.]

Rohingya issue in USA Government

Southeast Asia

November 15, 2011

Where does the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration work in the region?

The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) provides humanitarian assistance and protection to vulnerable populations in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and India. In addition, the Bureau also monitors refugee, internally displaced persons (IDPs), vulnerable migrants and statelessness issues throughout Southeast Asia on an ongoing basis.

What are the major challenges for refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the region?

Burmese: The 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law resulted in the statelessness of approximately 750,000 Rohingya in Burma. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) works with the Burmese government to provide identification documents to the Rohingya and improve their legal status and access to services. UNHCR seeks to improve community participation and self-management, especially of Muslim women and girls, in decisions on education and reproductive health services. The U.S. government advocates on status and documentation issues. Additionally, policy is aimed at ensuring that the Rohingya benefit from improvements in services for healthcare, education, water and sanitation, agriculture and infrastructure.
Roughly 150,000 Burmese refugees live in nine official camps on the Thai-Burma border, of which an estimated 50,000 are unregistered. U.S. government funding provides life-saving assistance to refugees in these camps and to those fleeing ongoing conflict in Burma. UNHCR focuses on providing protection, while NGOs implement assistance activities. Approximately 3 million additional Burmese migrants in Thailand live in urban areas.
Approximately 29,000 Rohingya reside in two official camps in Bangladesh, where UNHCR and NGOs work in the areas of health, skills training, education, and community mobilization. Since mid-1992, an estimated 200,000–500,000 unregistered Rohingya reside outside refugee camps in the Cox’s Bazar District of Southeastern Bangladesh. UNHCR requests the government of Bangladesh to fully register this population and improve their living conditions as well as those of the host Bangladeshi populations. The U.S. government urges the development of a comprehensive refugee policy and advocates for protection on behalf of vulnerable Rohingya.
In the recent past, civil defense groups trained by the Royal Thai Government intercepted, detained and pushed several sea-bound groups of Rohingya back out to sea without sufficient food and water. International attention allowed the issue to be raised in multilateral fora as the sea-bound Rohingya sought refuge in other countries, including Indonesia, India and Malaysia. The Bureau supports and encourages the development of humane and comprehensive solutions for sea-bound Rohingya.
Malaysia hosts an estimated three million migrants, one million of whom are considered illegal. Refugees are not distinguished from undocumented migrants and remain vulnerable to arrest and subject to detention, prosecution and deportation. A poorly trained and supervised paramilitary organization conducts periodic sweeps of those considered illegal migrants, including the over 90,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers from Burma recognized by UNHCR. While refugees and asylum seekers (particularly those without identification) are still concerned about harassment and raids, the protection environment has improved over the past two years. U.S government policy focuses on expanding life-saving assistance to urban Burmese refugees and asylum seekers; expanding protection; and ensuring that refugees and asylum seekers are protected against refoulement, arbitrary detention and other forms of violence and abuse, including access to registration and refugee status determination procedure.
An estimated 50,000–100,000 unregistered Burmese in India reside primarily in Mizoram State. In New Delhi, 11,000 are under UNHCR’s care, 5,000 of which are recognized refugees. Despite UNHCR subsistence allowances, they reportedly have difficulty integrating due to discrimination, the language barrier and a lack of livelihood skills appropriate for an urban area. The U.S. government continues to monitor the protection situation and assess the humanitarian assistance needs of vulnerable Burmese in India. (http://www.state.gov/j/prm/108723.htm)

Injustice and the Modern-Day Refugee

Two children share a smile in the Dakhla refugee camp in Algeria. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

It can be so easy to put from our minds the plight of the rest of the globe when life here in the States seems to get more difficult each day, between the high unemployment rate, the poor economy, and the general stress that seems to rule our lives.  However, there is a world beyond ourselves and the problems of that world are far greater than we can perceive. 

According to the European Parliament, right now there are 10 million people living in refugee camps.  These are people much like us who have no place to call home, who have gotten used to feeling displaced, without an identity, and who are some of the poorest people in the world.  The term “refugee” is rather broad, but Human Rights Education Associates define refugees as “people who are forced to flee their homes due to persecution, whether on an individual basis or as part of a mass exodus due to political, religious, military or other problems.”  How terrible it must be to be uprooted from all that you know and love, through no fault of your own, perhaps never to see your home again? 

Furthermore, horrible living conditions plague these refugee camps.  Hunger – even starvation – is prevalent among refugees, as well as the spread of disease due to a lack of effective sanitation systems as well as the large amount of people living in such close proximity. These refugee camps are scattered across the globe, located in the war-torn Middle East, as well as famine-ravaged Africa. 

Furthermore, some refugees are refused aid and amnesty from their new countries. For example, stateless refugees from Burma known as the Rohingya, are denied access to humanitarian aid because the government of Bangladesh denies them access. The Rohingya are a religious and ethnic minority, and according to  Physicians for Human Rights, they live in refugee camps, but without official refugee status. As a result, they are denied food, living in huts made of twigs and plastic next to open sewers, and many of their children suffering from malnutrition. This is just one case of many. 

Bread for the World aims to fight against injustices such as these. People of faith and conscience have a collective responsibility to look out for our fellow human beings, be they here or across the ocean. We must alert our members of Congress to the extreme poverty and hunger rampant in refugee camp. 

Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters has a mini campaign with the aim to form a circle of protection around international food aid programs that deliver humanitarian aid to those who most desperately need it.  America is a nation that despite its hardships is still quite prosperous. Let us use the resources we have been blessed with to be a blessing to those who need it most – the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the refugee.

 

Jael Kimball is a media relations intern at Bread for the World.

Source: Bread

Rohingya Boatpeople Held South of Phuket

Rohingya on the boat that landed in Satun, south of Phuket

Photo by television footage still

Click a thumbnail to view more photographs

By Chutima Sidasathian and Nussara Lem

Thursday, February 9, 2012

PHUKET: A boat containing 85 Rohingya men and boys was apprehended yesterday off the Thai province of Satun, south of Phuket.

The would-be refugees, heading for Malaysia, were taken into custody by local police at La Ngu after being spotted by National Park rangers near Lidee Island.

It's believed their 12-metre vessel ran out of petrol and the sailors, all male, told villagers that they had been without food for four days.

According to officials who confirmed the capture of the men to Phuketwan, the would-be refugees were given food and drink by locals and will be handed over to Thai Immigration officials tomorrow.

The men said they had set off from Ranong, a port on the Thai-Burma border, with the blessing of local Thai officials and were aiming for Malaysia.

A television camera captured the boat arriving in Satun and the footage has been posted at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bfh817YjB8I#!

Despite the signs of a more open and free approach by the Government in Burma, the Muslim-minority Rohingya remain non-citizens, without the rights accorded to other residents.

Restrictions on movement and marriage inside Burma mean many Rohingya men and boys put to sea in ricketty boats in an attempt to begin a new life elsewhere.

A crackdown by authorities in northern Burma and neighboring Bangladesh, where many Rohingya have fled to become unwelcome refugees, briefly interrupted the flow of boats south. More boats have been sailing recently.

One vessel, apprehended in Phang Nga, north of Phuket, on January 28 contained 79 men, including at least one Thai who appears to have been the person who provided the boat. in Bangladesh.

That arrival and another arrival of 54 men on December 4 at Takuapa, the Phang Nga district capital on the Andaman coast, were also filmed. Another boatload of 54 Rohingya is reported to have landed in the Indonesian province of Aceh on February 1.

Although the Thai military continues to be involved in the covert detention of the men who land in Thailand, non-government organisations are confident that they are no longer being mistreated.

The policy of Thai Navy patrols which intercept Rohingya vessels at sea is to ''help on'' boats to Muslim-majority Malaysia, their preferred destination, with food, water and repairs if required.

It's a change from January 2009, when Phuketwan and the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper revealed that hundreds of Rohingya were being ''pushed back'' in a secret operation from an island in Thailand.

Scores are thought to have perished at sea before survivors reached Indonesia and the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which belong to India.

The change in approach by the Thai authorities means that some of the men have been directed to an island off southern Thailand, where people-traffickers have picked them up for transfer to Malaysia.

It is believed that those who are taken back to the Thai-Burma border by the Thai Army are also quickly returned to brokers.

The policy of the Burmese navy is the same as that of the Thai navy, although the ''help on'' policy in Burma sometimes comes with beatings, boatpeople report.

The boats usually come ashore in Thailand of necessity when the Rohingya run out of food and water or experience mechanical problems.

Often, navigating by sight, the men have no idea whether they are off Thailand or have reached Malaysia.

In recent years there have been many landings north and south of Phuket, including one on southern Phuket in January last year.

Of concern to NGOs lately have been three capsize incidents involving four boats. Many men were picked up by local fishermen off the Bangladesh coast but it's believed as many as 200 may have drowned.

The annual ''sailing season'' for Rohingya begins each November and does not end until the monsoon arrives, usually in April, when putting to sea in the kind of boats they pay brokers to use becomes even more dangerous. 

 

Source: Phuket Wan

Plight of the Damned: Burma’s Rohingya

[April 10, 2009] By David Scott Mathieson Burma’s Rohingya Muslim minority may be the most blighted ethnic minority in Asia. The blame for treating them so badly is shared far and wide. But as Burma human rights expert David Scott Mathieson writes, their plight has long been known to the international community. So, why isn’t anything being done to help them?

The images of hundreds of men crammed into rickety boats, emaciated, bloodied and expressing equal parts shock and surprise at having reached land were almost from another time. These forlorn travelers, predominantly ethnic Rohingya Muslims from western Burma, landed in southern Thailand and the Indonesian island of Sumatra late last year as the latest influx from an annual sailing season for people escaping poverty, misery and almost medieval human rights violations in Burma and Bangladesh. Thailand’s military was accused of towing several boatloads of Rohingya back out to sea after they landed. In late December 2008, hundreds of bodies washed ashore in the Indian controlled Andaman Islands. Survivors told Indian authorities that they had landed in Thailand, been held for two days on a deserted island, and then towed back out to sea with a few sacks of rice and a little water. Other survivors told officials and doctors that during their long journey they had been tortured by Burmese sailors who stopped their vessel. In all, more than 6,000 men are estimated to have made the journey in dozens of fishing boats from Burma and Bangladesh beginning in November 2008. The Arakan Project, a Bangkok-based non-governmental organization, has been tracking the movements of boat people from Western Burma and Bangladesh for several years. What made this season different was the sharp increase in numbers, double a year earlier, and the media attention that accompanied it. Graphic pictures of Rohingya in detention on Thai tourist beaches appeared first in the South China Morning Post, the BBC and then on CNN, and as international concern grew, almost on cue, more boats began arriving. The international outcry centered on Thailand’s vicious “push-back” policy, which the new administration of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at first denied, then announced it would investigate. Ultimately, Thai officials blamed media distortion, saying that the Rohingya were economic migrants not refugees and that Thailand could not absorb the problem. In Thailand, proposals to set up temporary holding centers for the Rohingya to ascertain their status as either refugees or migrant workers were dismissed, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was granted only limited access to the hundreds of detainees in Thai custody. Most of the men were fined for illegal entry, and prepared to be sent back to Burma. This is what all of them fear, given their harsh reception there. They are often imprisoned for illegal departure, even though many have no Burmese identity cards. In their absence, their names are removed from Burma’s draconian household registration system that keeps track of people’s movements, and they are often handed stiff fines. Regional leaders announced that they would discuss the issue of the Rohingya boat people on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Thailand in late February. A regional solution was clearly needed. Little was done by the regional grouping, however, except to postpone decisions on stemming the flow until a meeting in April of the Bali Process, a multilateral mechanism for discussing human trafficking and smuggling. ASEAN’s failure to adequately address the issue demonstrated a few key facts about the Rohingya: that it was a relatively minor case of illegal human movement affecting Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India; the men do not pose a great threat to national security, as some governments contend; and that the blame for all this misery rests squarely inside Burma. So why the harsh treatment and seeming absence of mercy? All told, the Rohingya number about two million people. Approximately 800,000 remain in Burma and 200,000 in Bangladesh, with 30,000 of them in squalid refugee camps. An estimated half a million live in the Middle East as migrant workers, and 50,000 in Malaysia. Some make it to Japan, while others attempt the even longer sea voyage to reach Australia. They are leaving for good reasons: their living conditions in Burma are atrocious. The Rohingya inhabit the worst position in Burma’s dreadful human rights landscape. The men and young boys risk the dangerous journey across the Andaman Sea to seek employment and to send money back to families barely surviving in their homeland. The distinction between a refugee fleeing persecution and one seeking a better life doesn’t mean much to the Rohingya. And anyway, both are true. The Rohingya have borne the brunt of the Burmese military regime’s brutal state building for decades. They are an ethnic minority descended from a merging of Arakanese Buddhists, Chittagonian Bengalis and Arabic sea traders. Their dialect is distinct, if Bengali in origin, with smatterings of Persian. Centuries of co-existence with Arakanese Buddhists was bifurcated by British colonialism, when the boundaries of India and Burma were demarcated. As a result, the Rohingya became a people caught between states, with the majority situated in newly independent Burma in 1948. Burma’s treatment of its Muslim minority has generally been characterized by neglect punctuated by scapegoating. In the 1960s, the military-socialist regime of Ne Win expelled hundreds of thousands of South Asians from Burma during its “Burmese Way to Socialism” nationalization program, similar to the treatment Idi Amin meted out to Asians in Uganda a few years later. The Rohingya have been subjected to particularly harsh treatment, possibly more than any other ethno-religious minority in Burma. While almost every non-Burman ethnic group has staged an armed rebellion against the central government in the past 60 years, fuelling decades of low intensity conflict in which civilians have suffered the most, successive military governments have harbored a uniquely vicious aversion to the Rohingya. In 1978, the Burmese army mounted a murderous ethnic cleansing campaign they called Operation Dragon King (Naga Min) that drove more than 200,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. After staying for a year in such squalid conditions that 10,000 of them starved to death because the Bangladeshi authorities withheld food aid, most of the survivors returned to Burma. The socialist government completed a nationwide census in 1983 in which the Rohingya were not counted, rendering them stateless through exclusion. The 1982 Citizenship Act legalized this exclusion, creating two categories of people, full citizens of Burma, including most ethnic groups, and then “associate” citizens, such as the South Asian and Chinese minorities. The Rohingya were disqualified from either group because they could not prove their lineage as “associates” before 1948. Western Arakan’s isolation and underdevelopment meant that few Rohingya were registered at birth, or had documentation. The Rohingya are officially an alien and illegal community, not listed as one of the 135 recognized “ethnic nationalities” in Burma, and thus the majority of them are not entitled to national identity cards. This stateless status has provided the security forces with impunity to perpetrate routine abuses against Muslims in Western Burma. In 1991, the Burmese army repeated its pogrom. More than a quarter million Rohingya were driven out of Arakan into Teknaf and Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh. Hundreds were killed as the army slashed and burned its way through villages to force them out. The refugees were not welcomed in Bangladesh and were herded into rank refugee settlements. A few years later most of them were forced back over the border in a violent, United Nations-sponsored repatriation process. The survivors of this experience, and the remaining Rohingya in Arakan State, have been largely kept alive by foreign development agencies such as UNHCR and the World Food Program (WFP). A stark indicator of living conditions in Western Arakan State is contained in the WFPs recent food security survey in Burma, where more than half of young boys and girls were seriously malnourished, and most households had no independent sources of food. The Burmese military’s routine abuses against the Rohingya exacerbate the chronic poverty. They are denied travel permission between villages, which limits employment opportunities, education and trade. Permission for even limited travel must be obtained from local military units, and is often denied. Some Rohingya communities are herded into “new villages” where the military can monitor them and also seize their land for military-connected business projects. Forced labor and expropriation of property is a daily reality. Religious persecution is widespread, with many mosques destroyed or ordered to be emptied. Extra-judicial killings are common. This treatment reflects not just the instrumental use of violence to force the Rohingya to leave, but an unofficial policy of discrimination whose ultimate aim is the forced removal of a minority group. The ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) stayed quiet during the recent drama on the Thai and Indonesian coastlines. Eventually, the junta announced that the Rohingya were not Burmese citizens and had nothing to do with Burma, creating the impression for some that the tragedy involved only Bangladeshis. At the time of the recent ASEAN summit, the regime disingenuously announced that any “Bengali” who could prove that they were born in Burma could return. The exiled pro-democracy movement from Burma was largely silent. Indeed, many exiled opposition activists have also been dismissive of the Rohingya and routinely exclude them from multi-ethnic gatherings. Arakanese Buddhists become apoplectic when the issue of the Rohingya is raised and routinely deny that the Rohingya even exist. It’s hard to understand the origin of this hatred toward the Rohingya, beneath the excuses of national security, legal measures against illegal immigration, or even nationalism. Racism obviously plays a big part. This was demonstrated by the Burmese Consul-General in Hong Kong, Ye Myint Aung, who in February sent a letter to his fellow heads of mission in which he stated: “In reality, Rohingya are neither ‘Myanmar People’ nor Myanmar’s ethnic group. You will see in the photos that their complexion is ‘dark brown.’ The complexion of Myanmar people is fair and soft, good looking as well… (They are as ugly as ogres).” South Asians are derogatorily referred to as kala (foreigner) in Burma by every other ethnic group, but the Rohingya are even beneath this level of distain. There are few security reasons that could possibly justify Burma’s treatment of the Rohingya. A short-lived Mujahid rebellion in the early 1950s in Arakan didn’t attract widespread Rohingya support. Contemporary Rohingya armed resistance is small and militarily insignificant, and the political and armed resistance groups are splintered and constantly bickering. Small numbers of Rohingya men who have traveled to the Middle East for terrorism training have evidently not returned with any jihadist designs. There has never been a Muslim-connected terrorism incident in Burma, and as the Australian security analyst Andrew Selth has pointed out, Muslims in Burma are more likely to be terrorized by the Burmese military than to be terrorists. Since the early 1990s, the militarization of Western Burma has been dramatic, with a rise in the number of army battalions from 3 to 43, the biggest increase in the country. The Burmese army uses the local population to maintain their presence, stealing food, appropriating land and forcing civilians to build camps, excavate roads and carry supplies. The SPDC has been building up its strength to safeguard massive infrastructure projects. In December 2008, the Chinese energy company PetroChina signed a 30-year lease with the Burmese to buy natural gas off the coast of Western Arakan, in the Shwe Gas field; the consortium involves Indian, Thai, South Korean, Chinese and Burmese interests. The gas will be transported across Burma to Yunnan by pipeline, with a second pipeline running beside it that will transport crude oil from the Middle East. Although the majority of Rohingya communities are northwest of these planned pipeline routes, the increased troop presence has adversely impacted their already dismal existence. Thailand’s so-called push-backs, while shocking, should not have come as a surprise. The steadily increasing numbers of Rohingya arriving in Southern Thailand have sparked a tough Thai deterrence policy. In 2007, hundreds of Rohingya caught near Ranong in southern Thailand were detained to the north in the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot. Soon after, over 80 of them were sent back to Burma in an area controlled by the pro-SPDC militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA). The DKBA is notorious for its involvement in drug trafficking, illegal logging and extortion of migrant workers. Most of the men couldn’t pay to be smuggled home, so they trickled back into Thailand and were eventually trafficked down to Malaysia. Thailand has cast the Rohingya as a threat to national security. Military officials routinely accuse the men of being Muslim mercenaries masquerading as migrant workers, coming to Thailand to volunteer with Southern Thai Muslim separatist militants. It is true that some of the smuggling networks are also involved in arms smuggling from Cox’s Bazaar, but no Rohingya has ever been implicated in violent attacks in Thailand, nor been linked with the shadowy separatist cells fighting in Thailand’s deep South. In 2008, former Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej threatened to intern the Rohingya on a “desert island.” This seemed absurd bluster at the time, but he must have been serious. Thai security forces used remote Ko Sai Deang (Red Sand Island) as a holding center for captured Rohingya before they towed them out to sea in late December. Royal Thai Army officer Colonel Manas Kongpan of the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), who was implicated by a Thai court in a massacre of Thai Muslims five years ago at a mosque, was in charge of the operation. He was unapologetic about his forces’ treatment of the Rohingya, denying any harsh measures and saying Thailand’s policy was in line with international humanitarian practice. “The issue has become a scandal because of a newsman slandering the military and bad-mouthing Thailand,” he told the Bangkok Post. Prime Minister Abhisit has announced an investigation, but there is little likelihood that complicit officers will be punished. Malaysia is the preferred destination of Rohingya men looking for work. There is a thriving Rohingya community within the large migrant worker population from Burma in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, yet all migrant workers live a precarious existence subject to arbitrary arrests, beatings and intimidation. In Indonesia, the nearly 400 Rohingya who arrived appear to have won a temporary reprieve after Indonesia threatened to send them back. Conditions in the remaining Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh have marginally improved in the past two years, but living standards are still primitive and options slim. Not all the men in the boats are destitutes fleeing oppression, some are ethnic Bengali’s from Chittagong blending in to get a job in Malaysia or refugee resettlement opportunities in a third country. And a few of the Rohingya must be relatively prosperous to have paid the fees ‑ $300 for the journey from the Burmese or Bangladesh coast to southern Thailand, and later another $500-700 in trafficking fees. The average annual wage in Burma is less than $300, although most Rohingya would earn well below this. Finally, the Rohingya are not a “forgotten people,” as many headlines described them. They are more a foresworn people. No one wants them, even though the world is well aware of their predicament. In the past 20 years, there has been probably more international attention devoted to the Rohingya than to any other ethnic group in Burma. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, UNHCR, Médecins Sans Frontières and many other groups have been reporting on their plight since the 1991 campaign against them. Their persecution has been a litany of horrors the international community has been well aware of, but helpless or unwilling to rectify. While Burma is the key to stemming the exodus, other Southeast Asian states need to observe international standards over their treatment of migrant workers. ASEAN’s collective failure to address the root causes of the flight of the Rohingya from Burma will ensure its continuation. David Scott Mathieson is Burma Researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.