Saturday 12 January 2013

Only Grass And Dirt To Eat

 Rohingya Refugee Camp: Searching For Food In The Ditch (Photo - Steve Sandford)
Jack Lee
Alders Ledge
January 12, 2013

Starvation: A War Of Attrition
(part of The Darkness Visible series)

The photo above was taken more than a month ago and was taken in near a Rohingya refugee camp. These Rohingya are living life beyond the villages where their fellow Rohingya live in modern day concentration camps. These Rohingya live where food consist of grass and weeds found alongside dirty streets. They are not allowed to go into the Rakhine villages and purchase food. They are forbidden to use the same water as their Rakhine neighbors. Yet in comparison to the Rohingya still living in the villages, these are the lucky ones. 
Checkpoints much like those seen around the ghettos the Nazi's built during the Holocaust pot mark the area around the refugee camps. Though there are coconuts hanging in the trees outside the camps, though there is rice in the fields that the Rakhine now claim... the Rohingya starve. The barbed wire is a constant reminded that they are considered less than human in their own homeland. The lack of food makes it clear that they are considered of less value than the livestock the Rakhine raise in nearby pastures. This is the life that the Burmese have damned the Rohingya to. 
Ali Hassan, a 24 year old Rohingya man told Phuket Wan Travel News, "My babies are starving in front of my eyes. I cannot buy anything now I have no money." 
Ali Hassan had newborn twins at the time. It is impossible to know for sure if his children have survived. It is hard to imagine any child, let alone babies, living a life of starvation. But his story survives. Even if he and his family do not, his story will never perish. 
This war, this barbarism that Myanmar carries out, is meant to starve the Rohingya out of existence. The violence that plagued the Arakan state forever lingers in the air. Death hovers behind every shadow. It waits for the Rohingya... with open arms it accepts them of every age, gender, shape, and size. This is a war in as much as it pins one group against the other. Yet in this horrific struggle only one is armed... only one gets to fight... only one survives. 
There is an abundance of fish in the seas and waters along the Rakhine coasts. However the Burmese officials have confiscated almost all the fishing equipment the Rohingya once owned. Nets, poles, and hooks... nothing is left to harvest the food that the Rohingya so desperately need. 
For now the Rohingya slowly waist away as the little aid that is making it through the blockades is barely enough to keep even a small portion of them alive. It is in this slow starvation that many are turning to the the very people who cause their suffering to offer "a way out". The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party uses this wide spread starvation to traffic the Rohingya out of Myanmar. 
Over the last couple days nearly 700 Rohingya have turned up in human trafficking camps in Thailand. Over 500 Rohingya had to swim ashore in Malaysia after their boat sank 500 km off the coast. All of these Rohingya were trafficked out of the country by the RNDP. And of the RNDP's trafficking victims... they could easily be considered the lucky ones. 
Over half of the Rohingya who are sent out to sea each year die trying to make their way to Malaysia. Almost all Rohingya who are sent into Thailand are sent back to Myanmar having lost everything they had including the bribes that got them out of Burma the first time. These 1,200 Rohingya are lucky just to still be alive and outside of Myanmar. 
It is important to note at the close of this post that this tragedy, this genocide, could had been prevented. This horrific case of ethnic cleansing could be immediately stopped. All that is needed is for the outside world to finally wake up. To wake up and start taking action.

Govt moves to help detained Rohingya

Rohingya migrants sit inside a temporary shelter at a rubber plantation near the Thai- Malaysian border in Sadao district of Songkhla province. (Photo - WICHAYANT BOONCHOTE)

Bangkok Post
January 12, 2013

Fears grow of US human trafficking downgrade
Authorities have pledged to look after the 704 Rohingya migrants rounded up in two raids. 
The promise comes amid growing concerns that Thailand could face a downgrade on a US human trafficking watch list and risk sanctions by the US. 
Immigration officers and police yesterday found a second group of 307 Rohingya migrants including more than a dozen children in a warehouse on the border with Malaysia. 
They were found in Ban Dan Nok in Sadao district of Songkhla and were waiting to be transferred to a third country, authorities said. 
On Thursday, authorities rescued a different group of 397 Rohingya migrants locked up at a shelter in a remote rubber plantation, also in Sadao district. 
The group were staying in a makeshift shelter in the plantation where they had languished for three months waiting to be trafficked to a third country, police said. 
Acting on a tip-off, officials stormed the shelter on Thursday and found the Rohingya. 
"They are now waiting for deportation which will be done by Thailand's immigration police," Lt Col Katika Jitbanjong of Padang Besar police said. 
"They told officials they had volunteered to come to Thailand," he said, adding police were seeking an arrest warrant for the Thai landowner on charges of human trafficking and sheltering illegal migrants. 
Pol Maj Thanu Duangkaewngam, the inspector at the Songkhla immigration office, said police will investigate and find those responsible for smuggling the migrants into the country. 
The migrants will have to be deported back to Myanmar. 
Pol Col Krisakorn Pleethanyawong, deputy chief of the Songkhla provincial police, said officers had detained eight people - four Myanmar nationals, two Rohingya and two Thais - who had smuggled the 397 migrants. 
They have been charged with smuggling and sheltering people illegally, as well as possessions of firearms. 
Police will also summon two suspects for questioning. One of them is Prasit Lemlae, deputy mayor of the Padang Besar municipality, who owns the rubber plantation where the 397 Rohingya migrants were discovered. 
National police chief Adul Saengsingkaew yesterday told his subordinates to visit the migrants and find ways to ensure they are well looked after pending their deportation. 
The Social Development and Human Security Ministry will also allocate money to help the migrants, Pol Gen Adul said. 
The police force's anti-human trafficking division will send its staff to work with local police to track down the human trafficking network which links Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia, he said. 
The 704 migrants have now been separated into two groups. 
A group of 105 women and children have been sent to the Songkhla Children and Family Shelter and the male migrants have been moved to shelters at the Sa Dao immigration office, and nearby local police stations. 
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung will take foreign diplomats including those from the US and the Pacific region and the EU to visit Samut Sakhon where many migrant labourers work. 
The visit is meant to assure foreign countries that the government is making a serious effort to solve and prevent illegal human trafficking. 
Thailand has been on the US government's Tier 2 Watch List in the Trafficking in Persons Report for the past two years. 
The US will review the status again next month. If Thailand makes the Tier 2 list for a third time, it will be automatically downgraded to Tier 3 - the lowest classification and the same level with North Korea - which could mean that non-tariff sanctions are imposed.

Thailand to deport 400 Rohingya migrants after raid

A Rohingya migrant looking out from the window of a police van while being transported out of jail to the Thai immigration police in the southern province of Ranong, on January 31, 2009. Rights groups decry Thailand for failing to help Rohingya migrants who reach its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or on to neighbouring countries.

Around 400 Rohingya migrants discovered in a raid on a camp hidden in a remote rubber plantation in southern Thailand will be deported back to Myanmar, Thai police said on Friday. 
The group, 378 men, 11 women and 12 children, were found in a makeshift shelter in the plantation in Songkhla province where they had languished for three months waiting to be trafficked to a "third country", local police said. 
Acting on a tip-off officials stormed the shelter on Thursday and found the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group not recognised as citizens in Myanmar who have fled sectarian unrest in their thousands to Thailand and other countries. 
"They are now waiting for deportation which will be done by Thailand's immigration police," Lieutenant Colonel Katika Jitbanjong of Padang Besar local police told AFP. 
"They told officials that they had volunteered to come (to Thailand)," he said, adding police were seeking an arrest warrant for the Thai landowner on charges of human trafficking and sheltering illegal migrants. 
Rights groups decry Thailand for failing to help Rohingya migrants who reach its territory, instead pushing them back to Myanmar or on to neighbouring countries including Malaysia, which offers sanctuary to the minority. 
"Thailand is pursuing a beggar-thy neighbour approach," according to Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch Asia. 
"Thailand is using the good policy of its neighbour (Malaysia) to escape its own international obligation to protect refugees and it is shameful." 
The UN refugee agency has called on Myanmar's neighbours to open their borders to people fleeing a wave of communal violence in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine. 
Clashes between Buddhists and Muslims have left at least 180 people dead in Rakhine since June, and displaced more than 110,000 others, mostly Rohingya. 
Myanmar views the roughly 800,000 Rohingya in Rakhine as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship. 
Although the tensions have eased since a new outbreak of killings in October, concerns have grown about the fate of asylum-seekers setting sail in overcrowded boats. 
Last week Thailand deported 73 Rohingya boat people back to Myanmar, after they landed on the southern island of Phuket.

About Me

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Maung daw, Arakan state, Myanmar (Burma)
I am an independent man who voted to humanitarian aid.