After nearly a month of the Rohingya boat people crisis, there is finally some good news. Malaysia and Indonesia announced on Wednesday that they would stop pushing boat people back out to sea. Both countries deserve high praise for taking the right step to save lives.
Earlier in the week, the Philippines also expressed a willingness to take in a number of asylum seekers. And on Thursday, the United States promised to do the same, followed by Gambia.
Although Thailand remains non-committal on the no push-back policy, a meeting on Friday in Bangkok, which will be attended by senior officials from 15 countries as well as international organisations, will serve as a springboard for serious and determined action by regional countries and the international community to tackle the Rohingya exodus and the problem of human trafficking.
The joint decision by Malaysia and Indonesia is important not only because it saves lives, but also because it provides humane and practical steps to deal with the exodus. According to their announcement, Malaysia and Indonesia will take in the boat people and give them humanitarian assistance and temporary shelter “provided that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international community”.
This demand for international commitment and participation actually corresponds with the United Nations’ earlier appeal to allow UN agencies with expertise in human trafficking, migration and refugees to help with the screening process.
Malaysia and Indonesia have also called on other countries to lend a hand. External financial assistance will certainly help calm domestic anxiety over having to shoulder long-term costs and speed up the screening work. Thailand should consider taking this route.
The screening process of the boat people is not only necessary to determine who should be repatriated and resettled in third countries, but it will also provide crucial information to crack down on the transnational syndicates. The discovery of mass graves in southern Thailand and the atrocities of the traffickers shocked the world. Starvation, beatings and torture are used to extract ransoms from slave trade victims’ relatives. These people came on Thai boats and the slave trade route via Thailand is only possible with collusion from corrupt officials.
Although the Prayut administration has made arrests and transferred many officials to inactive posts, there are many more in the well-oiled webs of trans-border syndicates. Without safety and protection, the boat people cannot provide testimony to identify the culprits. Thailand must admit that it lacks expertise in interviewing and screening the victims of human trafficking. There is a tendency among officials also to downplay trafficking cases in order to protect the country’s record. This is tantamount to letting the criminals escape scot-free.
Without an effective crackdown on the human trafficking syndicates, the slave trade will continue as long as traffickers can still exploit the Rohingya's desperation to flee violent persecution at home. It is important for Asean to stop evading the crux of the problem: Myanmar. When a member country’s internal problem spills over to hurt other countries, the non-interference policy should no longer hold.
Also, the western world and international organisations should realise that pressuring Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to take in the Rohingya only deals with the end tail of the problem. They, too, must do their part to help end ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The boat people exodus will ease when Myanmar stops its ruthless oppression and accords the Rohingya their rights and dignity as equal human beings.