Arakan News Agency
Malaysia should use its regional and international influence to promote positive changes in Myanmar to stem the tide of people fleeing that country, a Bar Council official said.
Datuk M. Ramachelvam, who co-chairs the council’s migrants, refugees and immigration affairs committee, said Malaysia could take the lead in this matter since it now sits in the UN Security Council and is due to take over the Asean chair next year.
Subramaniam Gopal(left) and his councel Datuk M.Ramachelvam and colleagues coming out from the Magistrate Court, in Temerloh.
“Malaysia is in a perfect position to push for a regional solution to the problem of refugees and asylum seekers,” he said during the launch here on Friday of reports on the stateless Rohingya community in Malaysia and Thailand.
The reports were compiled by the London-based Equal Rights Trust and the Institute for Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRP) of Mahidol University, Bangkok.
The reports, the result of more than three years of in-depth research, analysis and field work by a multi-disciplinary international team, include direct testimony by the Rohingya people and interviews with key government officials dealing with the issues.
They range from Rohingya children being unable to access education because their births were not registered by the authorities to Rohingya women and children being detained and starved and men tortured and beaten while being trafficked.
Ramachelvam quoted a UN report that described the Rohingyas as the most persecuted ethnic community in the world.
Ramachelvam said Malaysia hosted nearly 138,800 refugees of various ethnicities from Myanmar, including about 39,700 Rohingyas.
source: The Star
