Arakan News Agency
MANILA, Philippines–The possibility of the Rohingyas heading to Philippine shores is remote but the government could offer the same help that it did when it allowed the transit of some Rohingya refugees here last year, a United Nations official said.
According to Bernard Kerblat, the country representative of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nine Rohingyas had sought temporary refuge in the Philippines before heading to their final resettlement destination.
“It was the Philippines that raised its hand and allowed the transit of the Rohingyas so that they would be extracted from a very, very dangerous situation,” Kerblat told a press briefing on Wednesday.
This happened in 2014 when the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration were seeking to save a group of refugees who were about to be trafficked and sold.
While the two organizations were trying to work out the Rohingyas’ resettlement, at least nine of the refugees found hospitality in the country where they were able to “regain their health and dignity,” said Kerblat.
He said that of all the nations in the region, the Philippines was the first to offer help.
“They were allowed to transit here in the Philippines first to recover, to get the basics, such as food and water, and to be eventually freed from fear that they would be sold again,” he said.
Kerblat said it is unlikely that the Rohingyas who are now adrift in the Andaman Sea would find their way here.
“(The Rohingyas) haven’t come to the Philippines. Thank God, for there will be a high number of casualties should they proceed to the Philippines,” he said.
Thousands of members of the Rohingya minority fleeing persecution by radical Buddhists in Burma, after escaping poverty in Bangladesh, are stranded at sea without food or water after they were abandoned by their human traffickers.
Nearly 3,000 have swum to shore and been rescued off Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
The UNHCR has appealed to Southeast Asian governments to make a collective response to the crisis.
Source : Inquirer
