Arakan News Agency
Amid calls for the ASEAN Summit to jointly address the growing diaspora of refugee seekers from Rakhine State, a Malaysian senator and former NGO director offered his solution: Send them back.
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Speaking at the ASEAN Peoples’ Forum in Kuala Lumpur on April 23, Datuk Paul Low from the Prime Minister’s Department said Myanmar refugee seekers without proper documentation should be shown the door.
Responding to questions at the forum, Mr Low suggested only Myanmar migrants with documentation could “stay and work” in Malaysia, while the irregular Myanmar population, including a large number of Rohingya, should be fined and repatriated.
Better jobs should be made available to them at home to discourage them from leaving, he said, seemingly conflating economic migration and asylum seekers fleeing persecution.
“My angle is that if we want to [solve the issue] we need to drive the economy of Rakhine State to make more opportunities,” he said, before acknowledging that Malaysia’s burgeoning Myanmar population includes trafficking victims, whose cases should be investigated.
More than 140,000 Myanmar refugees and asylum seekers currently live in Malaysia, according to the UN Refugee Agency estimates. More than 50,000 of those are from Chin State, while 40,000 are estimated to be Rohingya and another 12,000 identify as non-Rohingya Muslims.
Senator Low’s push for repatriating Myanmar refugees contrasted with his preceding speech.
“States cannot absolve themselves of their duty to respect human rights by saying that the rights of the majority need to be respected when this is only a thin veil to promote racism, subjugation, apartheid, slavery, genocide or even extractive forms of industry,” he said.
He emphasised the need for inclusivity to counter extremism, adding that, “Those who are considered ‘part of us’ are treated with preferential status whilst ‘those other people’ are considered lesser persons, with lesser rights.”
Mr Low wasn’t the only Malaysian official to recently jump on the repatriation bandwagon.
Another representative from the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim, told Malaysia’s parliament on April 16 that his party is “constantly urging UNHCR to speed up the repatriation process or to send [refugees] to a third country – particularly those from Myanmar, as their prolonged presence here has given rise to numerous problems”.
Since Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, most refugees are treated as illegal migrants. Deporting such refugee seekers has been challenging in the past, however, as Myanmar accepts only those who can prove their citizenship. Many of the Muslim refugees from Rakhine State, whom the government insists on calling Bengali, lack official identification or citizenship.
Amos Hau Kim, an attendee at the recent forum, which was held in the lead-up to the 26th ASEAN Summit, and a coordinator at the Coalition of Burma Ethnics Malaysia, said without documents from the UNHCR, most of Malaysia’s refugees struggle to safely remain in Malaysia.
Also speaking at the ASEAN Peoples’ Forum, Malaysian politician Mohamed Azmin Ali delivered a speech criticising the bloc’s “non-interference” principle for aggravating human rights violations in the region like the “systematic expulsion of the Rohingya from Myanmar”.
Source : MyanmarTimes
