Bangkok, Thailand: Muslim organizations from ASEAN brought up the Rohingya issue in their meeting entitled “Peoples Call for Justice and Peace”, organized by the Council of Muslim Organizations of Thailand and the Nusantara Initiatives for Justice and Peace (NADI), Penang and Jakarta-based NGO at the Islamic Centre, Bangkok on October 17, according to Enayet Ullah, a member of Burmese Rohingya Association in Thailand (BRAT).
More than 30 Muslim NGO activists and representatives from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Cambodia gathered in the capital of Thailand to discuss the impact and implications of three conflict-torn regions in Southeast Asia and called for ASEAN and ASEAN member governments to undertake new and renewed efforts to tackle the conflicts.
The meeting focused and urged the regional governments on the military campaigns, their impact, and the human rights situation of: The Rohingyas in Arakan, Burma; the Muslims of Yala, Narathiwat, Patani and Satun, and the Bangsamoro of Mindanao, Philippines.
In all of these three conflict zones, millions have been killed, displaced and made refugees either in their own countries or other countries in which they have sought asylum, and/or made to suffer a host of human rights violations for several decades. Generations of Rohingyas, Moros and South Thai Malays are growing up in an environment of violence, deprivation and tragedy.
The three conflicts, involving the issue of the right of self-determination to indigenous communities, have been going on for many years without any resolution and produced serious violation of human rights, socio-economic underdevelopment; waste of valuable and limited resources on trying to find a military solution to the conflict; dislocation, poverty and hardship for millions of people, Penang-based Citizens International's executive director Mohideen Abdul Kader said in his presentation.
Sarawut Sriwanyot, Chairman of the Council of Muslim Organizations of Thailand said at the meeting, “We are concerned about the plight of Rohingya people in Burma, who are denied citizenship by the Burmese government. They face human rights violations like other ethnic minorities and systematic persecution and operation which force them to flee the home country.”
According to the Thai news website Prachatai on October 19, the chairman of the Council of Muslim Organizations of Thailand said that the meeting agreed “to call for the rights of Rohingya as citizens of Burma. They should have the right to participate in democratic development of the country in the same way as the majority Buddhists and other ethnic groups. We hope that the ASEAN would propose this to the Burmese regime.”
At the meeting, Enayet Ullah, the member of BRAT delivered a speech on Arakanese Rohingya and explained to the participants about the historical background of Arakanese Rohingya, life and present situation in Northern Arakan where most of the Arakanese Rohingya live.
The Rohingya problem is a problem of ‘Religious, Ethnic and Political persecution’ to rid Arakan of the Muslim population. Their problem is essentially a regional problem with international dimension, Enayet said.
The human right abuses and violations against them are systematic, consistent and widespread. They include statelessness, severe restrictions movement, education, marriage and religion, extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, forced labour, forced relocation, land confiscation, and arbitrary arrests and extortion on a daily basis, he added.
“Due to extreme conditions, thousands of Arakanese Rohingyas had left for Southeast Asian countries, in search of a new tomorrow, choosing often dangerous routes through Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in rickety boats where they were intercepted at sea by Thai coast guards and had been tortured, jailed and pushed these distressed people out in engineless boats without food and water which were published in international media,” he said exposing the plight of Arakanese Rohingya to the participants.
Some of them drowned in the high sea while others were rescued by the Indian and Indonesian Navy. The boat people (Arakanese Rohingya), who were detained by the Thai Navy still languish in Thai prison without access to medical treatment and the UNHCR where a couple of detainee had already died in prison, he said.
Some brand them as economic migrants but their flights are interlinked with persecution and have political roots. They are refugees (“person with a well-founded fear of persecution,” according to the international definition of “refugee”), he added.
Enayet explained to the conference participants about the situation of Arakanese Rohingya in Thailand that Arakanese Rohingya and other Burmese Muslims are treated differently by the UNHCR where UNHCR should ensure a screening process for necessary consideration for other Burmese ethnics groups in the border area.
On the other hand, recently, the Thai government has introduced Migrant Work Permits and ‘Identity Verification Program’ in order to control the immigrants from neighboring countries, where the Thai authorities suspect the Arakanese Rohingyas of having link with the Muslims of Southern Thailand and are discriminating against them. It is an unsubstantiated and false allegation. The Thai authorities should treat them like other aliens, he said.
After the end of the conference, 'The Bangkok Declaration', was released, which was accepted by 45 civil society groups. It will be submitted to the governments of Thailand and other ASEAN member states, urging them to shun military options for the resolution of the conflict in favour of peaceful and holistic strategies for dispute settlement, socio-economic development and political empowerment.
