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56548
Tue, 04/21/2009 - 08:33
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News Focus: ROHINGYA ISSUE GAINS INSIGNIFICANT SPOTLIGHT IN BALI MEETING
By Eliswan Azly
Jakarta, Apr 20 (ANTARA) - Amidst the high expectations for Myanmarese delegates to speak up about the Rohingya refugees problem to help settle people smuggling, actually this issue gained small public attention during last week's Bali ministerial meeting.
The Bali ministerial meeting could only make use of an ad-hoc team to find an answer why the refugees decided to illegally migrate.
"We have to conduct a thorough study to determine whether they were looking for an asylum to get away from political pressure from their government or because they sought a better life due to economic pressure in their own country," Foreign Minister Hasan Wirajuda said here on Monday.
Rohingya refugees have presented a significant diplomatic and humanitarian quandary for many countries, mainly because of their persecution by Myanmar's military junta. The Rohingya is a Muslim minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and the military regime refuses to recognize them as one of the country's 130 minorities.
"The case of the Rohingya Muslims who are not recognized by the Myanmar regime as their citizens, needs also be taken up in the Bali meeting," Dr Sofyan Siregar, a political analyst and lecturer at the Islamic University of Europe in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said in an e-mailed message on Saturday.
Many Rohingya Muslims, oppressed by the Myanmar regime, had fled to other countries, including Indonesia.
It was reported that hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who had first arrived in Thailand, were put by the Thai authorities in nine wooden boats towed by Thai army vessels into the middle of the ocean before letting them go without any engine or adequate food.
After floating in the sea for 21 days with only a few kilograms of rice and one gallon of drinking water, only two boats arrived safely in Aceh province, while the fate of the other seven boats were still unknown.
Aceh Province has received nearly 400 Rohingya refugees, and some 193 of them were stranded in Sabang, Aceh, on January 7, 2008, and another 198 reached the coast of East Aceh on February 3,2008, after 21 days at sea, with some of them in a critical condition.
Even the murder of Rohingya boat people by towing their ricky boats into the middle of the ocean by the Thai army and left them without any engine, their migration to other countries to go away their homeland was inseparable from Myanmar junta's persecution against this minority, Sofyan said.
"This is a violation of human rights which has triggered an international outcry toward the Myanmarese regime which had been treating the minority in their border area inhumanly," he said.
Sharing Sofyan's view was Said Nizar SH. LLM, an expert in international law at the Hasanuddin University of Makassar, South Sulawesi, who said that the issue on human rights violations should not be underestimated.
Of the incorrect and unjust borders drawn by Western colonial powers after World Wars I and II, the borderline between Arakan and south Thailand had been most cruelly set up. The Rohingya Muslims of Arakan (now Rakhine) were cut off from the Malay Muslims of southern Thailand, as well as the Muslims of present-day Malaysia and Bangladesh.
Placed under the political authorities of Rangoon (now Yangon), capital of Myanmar, formerly Burma, the Arakan region entered a long period of neglect and oppression. Finally, after many years of deep suffering, they began to board small wooden boats heading to the open sea in the hope of landing somewhere as political, economic, and religious refugees. They have been denied entry practically everywhere.
"No one wants them. Even countries that claim to represent Muslims also do not want them, which proved that there is no such thing as Muslim ummah there. The Rohingyas are now hoping to come to their dream country, the United States, as temporary refugees, until some other countries agreed to accept them," Nizar said.
According to him, the whole countries in the world needed to pay more attention to the fate of the Rohingya people, rather than merely focusing on the democratization in Myanmar.
But Myanmar might stop persecuting the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar who are now still considered stateless.
Myanmar often ignores the Rohingyas completely, saying the minority group is a problem of Bangladesh. How the Myanmar military regime managed to brush off their responsibility is quite amazing, and a big lie. The borderline defended by the United Nations clearly places these people as a Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist state of Myanmar and nowhere else.
"If Myanmar doesn't recognize the Arakan region, they must give it away to another country. Instead, the junta regime is driving the Arakanese, including the Rohingyas, away, forcing them to become "boat people" at the mercy of rape, robbery, and drowning or starving in the open sea," Nizar said.
In the meantime, Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said that it was not impossible to discuss the case. However, it would all depend on the progress of discussions.
"Actually, the issue has been taken up on various occasions such as on the bilateral meeting between the Indonesian foreign minister and his Myanmarese counterpart and also during the Asean ministerial meeting (in Hua Hin)," he said.
The important thing to note now is that the meeting is merely an effort to improve relations between the two countries. Hopefully, through harmonious bilateral relations the problem often deemed a bottleneck could be brought to a satisfactory solution, including the issue on the Rohinyas, he said.
Jakarta, Apr 20 (ANTARA) - Amidst the high expectations for Myanmarese delegates to speak up about the Rohingya refugees problem to help settle people smuggling, actually this issue gained small public attention during last week's Bali ministerial meeting.
The Bali ministerial meeting could only make use of an ad-hoc team to find an answer why the refugees decided to illegally migrate.
"We have to conduct a thorough study to determine whether they were looking for an asylum to get away from political pressure from their government or because they sought a better life due to economic pressure in their own country," Foreign Minister Hasan Wirajuda said here on Monday.
Rohingya refugees have presented a significant diplomatic and humanitarian quandary for many countries, mainly because of their persecution by Myanmar's military junta. The Rohingya is a Muslim minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and the military regime refuses to recognize them as one of the country's 130 minorities.
"The case of the Rohingya Muslims who are not recognized by the Myanmar regime as their citizens, needs also be taken up in the Bali meeting," Dr Sofyan Siregar, a political analyst and lecturer at the Islamic University of Europe in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said in an e-mailed message on Saturday.
Many Rohingya Muslims, oppressed by the Myanmar regime, had fled to other countries, including Indonesia.
It was reported that hundreds of Rohingya Muslims who had first arrived in Thailand, were put by the Thai authorities in nine wooden boats towed by Thai army vessels into the middle of the ocean before letting them go without any engine or adequate food.
After floating in the sea for 21 days with only a few kilograms of rice and one gallon of drinking water, only two boats arrived safely in Aceh province, while the fate of the other seven boats were still unknown.
Aceh Province has received nearly 400 Rohingya refugees, and some 193 of them were stranded in Sabang, Aceh, on January 7, 2008, and another 198 reached the coast of East Aceh on February 3,2008, after 21 days at sea, with some of them in a critical condition.
Even the murder of Rohingya boat people by towing their ricky boats into the middle of the ocean by the Thai army and left them without any engine, their migration to other countries to go away their homeland was inseparable from Myanmar junta's persecution against this minority, Sofyan said.
"This is a violation of human rights which has triggered an international outcry toward the Myanmarese regime which had been treating the minority in their border area inhumanly," he said.
Sharing Sofyan's view was Said Nizar SH. LLM, an expert in international law at the Hasanuddin University of Makassar, South Sulawesi, who said that the issue on human rights violations should not be underestimated.
Of the incorrect and unjust borders drawn by Western colonial powers after World Wars I and II, the borderline between Arakan and south Thailand had been most cruelly set up. The Rohingya Muslims of Arakan (now Rakhine) were cut off from the Malay Muslims of southern Thailand, as well as the Muslims of present-day Malaysia and Bangladesh.
Placed under the political authorities of Rangoon (now Yangon), capital of Myanmar, formerly Burma, the Arakan region entered a long period of neglect and oppression. Finally, after many years of deep suffering, they began to board small wooden boats heading to the open sea in the hope of landing somewhere as political, economic, and religious refugees. They have been denied entry practically everywhere.
"No one wants them. Even countries that claim to represent Muslims also do not want them, which proved that there is no such thing as Muslim ummah there. The Rohingyas are now hoping to come to their dream country, the United States, as temporary refugees, until some other countries agreed to accept them," Nizar said.
According to him, the whole countries in the world needed to pay more attention to the fate of the Rohingya people, rather than merely focusing on the democratization in Myanmar.
But Myanmar might stop persecuting the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar who are now still considered stateless.
Myanmar often ignores the Rohingyas completely, saying the minority group is a problem of Bangladesh. How the Myanmar military regime managed to brush off their responsibility is quite amazing, and a big lie. The borderline defended by the United Nations clearly places these people as a Muslim minority in the predominantly Buddhist state of Myanmar and nowhere else.
"If Myanmar doesn't recognize the Arakan region, they must give it away to another country. Instead, the junta regime is driving the Arakanese, including the Rohingyas, away, forcing them to become "boat people" at the mercy of rape, robbery, and drowning or starving in the open sea," Nizar said.
In the meantime, Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said that it was not impossible to discuss the case. However, it would all depend on the progress of discussions.
"Actually, the issue has been taken up on various occasions such as on the bilateral meeting between the Indonesian foreign minister and his Myanmarese counterpart and also during the Asean ministerial meeting (in Hua Hin)," he said.
The important thing to note now is that the meeting is merely an effort to improve relations between the two countries. Hopefully, through harmonious bilateral relations the problem often deemed a bottleneck could be brought to a satisfactory solution, including the issue on the Rohinyas, he said.
