Another wave of despair

The arrival in Thailand before dawn on Sunday of 56 refugees in boats, believed to be Muslim Rohingya, suggests that the authorities here and elsewhere in Southeast Asia have gravely underestimated the situation in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Thailand has seen desperate Rohingya refugees arrive before, helping and abusing them in turn, and yet no member-country of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has devised an appropriate solution to their plight as stateless people denied the rights of citizenship. In Thailand they are typically treated as simple illegal entries, arrested, detained and deported.
This despite decision-makers across the region knowing full well the extent of the problem in Myanmar and doing nothing about it on an adequate scale.
Communal conflicts stemming from racial and religious prejudice have resulted in at least a million people being forced from their homes in western Rakhine state over the past decade. In the latest exodus, beginning last August, 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighbouring Bangladesh. The violence continues in Rakhine and life in the refugee camps in Bangladesh is brutal, so now some of those same people are trying to get to more accommodating places, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. They risk journeys in crowded boats in the hope of finding jobs and sanctuary from violence in a country where their fellow Muslims predominate.
Security officials and other observers in Thailand had insisted that the Rohingya would no longer be able to attempt that sea crossing. They said their movements were too strictly controlled now in both Bangladesh and Rakhine. They said a major crackdown over the past year had weakened the trafficking syndicates that falsely promised them safe passage. Whatever part of those claims was true, the traffickers have obviously found an alternative methodology, and the Rohingya are clearly still prepared to risk death to make a fresh start. The overcrowded refugee camps and unsettled situation in Rakhine – and the failure of Myanmar and Bangladesh to establish a clear, reassuring framework for repatriation – are powerful factors driving the Rohingya to desperate measures.
United Nations representatives and other foreign observers who have been allowed to visit Rakhine understand why the Rohingya are so fearful of returning home if the Myanmar government makes the offer. Their communities, their houses, have been razed and bulldozed and their croplands confiscated. Another 120,000 people remaining in Rakhine and meagrely sheltered as “internally displaced persons” with nowhere to go.
Citing interviews with refugees in the Bangladesh camps, Doctors Without Borders estimates that a military crackdown in Rakhine last year killed 6,700 Rohingya during the first month alone. 
It’s time for Thailand, an immediate neighbour, and Asean, of which Myanmar is a member, to urgently devise a plan to help resolve the crisis. The humanitarian assistance they provide in both Myanmar and Bangladesh is no longer enough, as well as being inadequate to the scale and complexity of the disaster.
An Asean summit is scheduled for late this month. Singapore, chairing the bloc this year, should try to initiate a plan. The word “intervene” is taboo for the group – it has a firm policy against intervening in member-countries’ internal affairs – but it could agree to, say, “participate” in helping Myanmar prevent a further dangerous exodus of these benighted people.
The Malaysia-bound boat containing 56 Rohingya that restocked in Krabi on Sunday will not be the last unless their problems are tackled properly. Tight controls in the camps and tougher action on traffickers can only go so far. This is a crisis whose root causes – bigotry, discrimination, unfair treatment, denied rights – must be addressed comprehensively.