Pushed Back Into The Abyss

Failure Of Humanity In Thailand
(part of The Darkness Visible series)

(Rohingya Refugees Awaiting Deportation From Thailand)

Found drifting off the shore of Thailand's resort town, Phuket, 73 Rohingya refugees are set to be deported back to Myanmar. Among the refugees are women and children. And despite their claims of physical abuse at the hands of the Burmese military, none are going to receive asylum within Thailand.

The question remains just why the Rohingya would want to stay in Thailand in the first place? 

Human traffickers in Thailand have used Rohingya as slaves for factories and fishing trawlers operating out of Thai waters. Thai police and military are often seen abusing Rohingya refugees and forcing the Rohingya back out to open water. Government organizations in Thailand have been discriminating against the Rohingya for decades. And yet the Rohingya still try to enter Thailand in droves. 

This leaves us to guess that even moderate discrimination and routine abuse are still seen as a better life than what awaits them back in Myanmar. 

(Refugees Show The Wounds Burmese Military Gave Them)

The UN says that the Thai authorities should halt all attempts to deport the refugees by labeling them "migrant workers". This cheap trick in labeling has allowed Thailand to persistently deny entry to Rohingya in the past. On many occasions the Thai navy has claimed that they had at the very least given some supplies to the "boat people" before sending them back to sea. But even in doing this the Thai navy was simply giving the Rohingya a death sentence in boats that obviously had already failed. 

UN officials have pleaded with Thailand to wait until UN observers could arrive to meet with the latest wave of Rohingya refugees. Yet, just as with most cases of "boat people", Thailand shows no intention of waiting before shipping the Rohingya families back over the border into Burma. 

(Thai Military Guard Rohingya Refugees)

In response to this failure by Thailand to show at least some form of humanity we can expect the UN to propose some new plan for Southeast Asian countries when dealing with Rohingya refugees. In doing this the UN will once again fail to do anything to actually stop the cause of this new wave of refugees in the first place. While telling Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries, to accept the refugees the UN has shown no sign of telling Myanmar to cease the killings that have caused this exodus. 

If the West will not act to stop the genocide the Rohingya will continue to flee by sea. Those who take to the ocean will once again face hostile navies and deadly cases of starvation and dehydration. As history has shown, hundreds... if not thousands... will be lost to the sea or be forced into slavery. 

Life amongst the Burmese government and Rakhine Buddhist has proven impossible for the Rohingya trapped within Myanmar. For this reason death at sea appears to be the only way out. And yet the West promised these people time and time again... Never Again.

Kaman Suffer Alongside Rohingya

No Place For Muslims Within Myanmar
(Part of The Darkness Visible series)

(Organized Slaughter of Muslims in Burma) 

Since mid summer the world has watched as the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine state have been targeted and attacked by their Buddhist neighbors. For nearly half a year now we have seen countless cases of violence that are tantamount to ethnic cleansing. And yet the world has failed to do anything about it. Worse of all, most world leaders refuse to call these killings what they really are, genocide. 

As the darkness of genocide has spread across western Burma the victims of these attacks have all but been forgotten. The reasons for their deaths have been pushed to the back of newspapers or websites so as to hide the conflict all together. And in doing this we have failed to stop the killings or even recognize those who are dead and dieing. 

For those of us who are bearing witness to this tragedy it is hard to look past the Rohingya, who make up the majority of the victims. We have in a way made them our poster child in a campaign to halt the blood shed. And with some justification in doing so, we have focused on their plight with a sense of tunnel vision as the world passed us by. 

In reality their are more than just Rohingya men, women, and children being targeted in the Rakhine. Their Muslim brothers and sisters who are not ethnic Rohingya are also being targeted. The Kaman Muslims in Myanmar are at risk of being targeted simply due to their religion. They too suffer from the wave of ethnic cleansing that has engulfed Burma. Yet the world has given little concern for their well-being or for their dead.

"We never fought with them before.  We used to live together in the same village."

The Kaman are given citizenship in Myanmar. However this citizenship is often subject to obvious levels of discrimination. It can be taken away at any given time and the Kaman Muslim becomes stateless without any cause given or legal rights to refute the decision. In reality the Kaman are little better off than any other Muslim in the extremist Buddhist country of Myanmar. At best, they are second class citizens on the basis of their religion. 

Racial slurs like "kular" (the equivalent of the slur 'nigger' in the West) are used for both Kaman Muslims and the Rohingya Muslims. When fighting broke out the Buddhist mobs operated on the mentality that "Kaman are kular too". There was no distinguishing between the Kaman or the Rohingya when it came time to attack and burn down Muslim homes or mosque. 

When the Burmese government began to establish ghettos for the Rohingya the Kaman, who lived amongst the Buddhist prior, were forced into the squalor alongside the "illegal immigrants". Even though the Kaman are legal citizens the Myanmar military used the excuse that it was for their protection that they be removed. 

Now the Kaman make up a small, but important, portion of the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced peoples within Burma. After all, a large majority of the Kaman do not want to flee the country and risk loosing their citizenship or papers that prove their nationality. And that is exactly what happens to a Kaman Muslim when they jump across the border or flee in a boat. Myanmar refused reentry legally and denies the Kaman citizenship. Putting them in the same boats as the Rohingya who are stateless. 

In addition to clear cut discrimination in issuing the citizenship cards to Kaman, Rakhine police and Burmese military have the "right" to order Kaman to work without pay. Like the Rohingya, Kaman Muslims can be beaten without legal recourse if they do not fulfill their obligations to the Buddhist majority. This also means they can loose their citizenship if they can not pay annual and random taxes levied at the whims of the state. Any refusal to work as slaves can and does result in the loss of citizenship. 

But this one little piece of paper has been all that has separated the Kaman from the Rohingya. Up until this latest bout of ethnic cleansing the fact that the Kaman had citizenship rights had put them above the level of discrimination the Rohingya faced. Yet it was the religion that linked the two groups that put them both in the same gun sights. 

Today Myanmar announced that it will begin permitting Rohingya citizenship rights with drastic restrictions. This move in affect will level the playing field for Myanmar's Muslim minorities. All will now face the same level of hatred by both federal government and local government alike. 

The religious war against the Burmese Muslim groups will continue for some time to come if nothing is done to stop it. For now the Kaman will continue to suffer alongside the Rohingya. Both will continue to face starvation and disease as they flee the wrath of Buddhist extremist. And when the season of boating comes, a record number of both groups will take to the ocean in search of hope. A search that often ends in tragedy. 

It is important to end with the reminder that all this could have been prevented. Stronger UN action to prevent genocide is possible. Western governments, now set to profit from Myanmar's conflict, could have continued levying sanctions upon the genocidal regime in Rangoon. As a world community we could have begun speaking out much sooner than we had. And China, Russia, and ASEAN could all have waited before rushing in for Myanmar's wealth of natural resources. But instead, we have done nothing to stop it.

Lost Boys

Not Exactly Never-never Land
(Part of The Darkness Visible series)

(Rohingya Preparing To Flee)

Every day off the coast of Burma the Rohingya people take to the sea in hopes of fleeing the ethnic clashes that have enveloped much of their homeland. These "terrorist", "invaders", and "outsiders" have been targeted for extermination in what appears to be a repeat of ethnic cleansing campaigns of the past. They are an indigenous minority of the region. The areas along the border with Bangladesh and Myanmar has been their home for as long as anyone can tell. But for now, once again, many are forsaking Myanmar and its abuses and risking everything by throwing themselves at the mercy of the sea. 

Around half of those who attempt to flee Myanmar by the water die at sea. Their bodies and their names are forever lost to the cruel ocean and their lives forgot by those who drove them there in the first place. In many ways the ocean is just playing its part in Myanmar's genocide. 

For 112 Rohingya the voyage out of Myanmar took them somewhere just north of Phuket, Thailand yesterday. This refugee boat was different form most however in the fact that the majority of the refugees were children. 56 of the refugees were teenagers, with the youngest being only 14 years old. The remaining 46 are believed to be under the age of 26. 

So what happened to this ship full of Rohingya boys? Are they safe in Thailand? Are they getting aid from the UN in a ASEAN nation? 

This is the disappointing and rather scary nature of what happens to Rohingya refugees when they have the misfortune of landing in Thailand. If they are allowed to land at all. 

Upon landing in the province of Phang Nga the Rohingya were most likely "greeted" by Thai military or coast guard. We do not know who made it to the shipwreck site first. All we do know is that the Thai authorities had scuttled the ship and dispersed the Rohingya before anyone could claim these boys were refugees. This is the customary approach in Thailand. If the ship can't be dragged back out to sea then it will be destroyed and the people aboard told to disappear.  Rohingya are not granted refugee status in Thailand. 

For a few brief moments that Thai authorities did classify the Rohingya as "Burmese". This is ironic since the Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar itself. But the act of being called a citizen is not the same thing as being a citizen for Rohingya. The Thai may have or may be in the act of sending the Rohingya back to Myanmar. Nobody can say for sure what happened to the boys. 

It is a simple fact that human rights organizations are not granted access to Rohingya refugees within Thailand. Had the Rohingya been classified as refugees we would have known. Groups like the Red Cross or the UN would have been on the scene to do their job... we would hope. But the Rohingya aren't allowed that comfort in Thailand. 

Instead these boys did what all Rohingya do when they are unfortunate enough to crash in Thailand. They vanished. 

The most likely explanation is that the Thai police most likely rounded up the boys and sent them to the border with Burma. There they were most likely deported back to the country they attempted to flee from. And with their money spent on this first failed attempt... it will most likely be a long time before any of the 112 Rohingya try to flee again.

As for Thailand.

The lack of humanity shown by the Thai is not new or unique to this latest outbreak of ethnic cleansing in Burma. The Thai have for decades now used their navy to "help along" Rohingya boats that loose power or become disabled off the Thai coast. The practice of shipping Rohingya back to Burma has been standard policy in Thailand for just as long. It is blatantly obvious that the Rohingya just plain are not welcome in Thailand.

Instead of offering to let outside human rights organizations access to the refugees, Thailand stonewalls any attempt by the media or human rights groups to investigate the issue. Any offer to help the Rohingya is denied since the Thai do not want to "encourage" more refugees. And absolutely no sense of transparency is eluded to as the Thai secretly wage war on the world's most neglected group of people.

In the case of the lost boys... never-never land is just a dream.