According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees there are an estimated 11.4 million refugees in our world plus another 20 odd million asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons and other "persons of concern".
This is only one story currently unfolding.
About 200 refugees were picked up by the Indonesian Navy near Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra last week. They had been drifting at sea aboard a 4o foot wooden boat for almost three weeks. This was the second boatload of people from Burma to land in Aceh in the past month. So far 6 boatloads have been found in the Andaman Sea over the past six weeks.
The refugees are members of the Rohingya, a marginalised Muslim ethnic group from the northern Rakhine state of Western Myanmar on the border with Bangladesh. Although they have a history dating back to 7th century when Arab Muslim traders settled in the region, the estimated 3 million Rohingya were denied their ethnic minority group status by the Citizenship Act of Burma in 1983 and are officially stateless, subjected to violence and discrimination by the Burmese government. Hundreds of thousands have fled across the border to Bangladesh, where they survive in inadequate refugee camps. The Bangladesh government doesn't want them there. Some leave by boat, trying to get to Malaysia.
This latest group of Rohingya sought to flee from their desperate conditions. But once launched on their perilous journey, things went from bad to worse.
Apparently they ended up in Thailand, where their reception was far from welcoming. They were rounded up by the Thai military, beaten and abused, then dragged out to sea where they were abandoned, left to drift in tattered open boats with no engines. In this most recently discovered boat, originally there had been 220 men but 22 died at sea. All told, there had been a flotilla of 9 motorless boats towed out to sea by the Thais containing about 1200 people. Three boats still remain missing.
Since the current outcry over the Thai treatment of these boat people, the government has announced that any Rohingya arriving by boat would be treated humanely but would be returned to Myanmar. They have absolutely no intention of creating refugee camps for these people. They have implied that because they are Muslims they are concerned about their current problems with Muslim groups in southern Thailand, and are not inclined to add to the numbers. Currently there are 9 camps in northern Thailand along the border containing 111,000 registered refugees from Myanmar, mostly Karen, as well as camps near the Laos border containing the Hmong, who are now being repatriated.
Angelina was touring the northern camps along the Thai-Myanmar border yesterday. She issued a statement saying
"Visiting Ban Mai Nai Soi and seeing how hospitable Thailand has been to 111,000 mostly Karen and Karenni refugees over the years makes me hope that Thailand will be just as generous to the Rohingya refugees who are now arriving on their shores,"
Doesn't look likely.
Top cartoon by Harn Lay , bottom cartoon by Stephff , in the Irrawaddy
