Like most explosive crises, the new boat people crisis grew almost imperceptibly and then, suddenly, dominated the front pages of the world. Many knew it was coming, but hoped it wouldn’t.
Human traffickers shoved off from Rakhine state in western Myanmar and eastern Bangladesh, quickly turning into an unmanageable fleet of rickety, dangerous, overloaded boats trying to get to Malaysia, but often washing up or drifting into Thailand and Indonesia.
In the confusing and tumultuous opening days, all three countries simply tried to stick with their policies of the past couple of years. For Thailand that meant pushing them back, not a Rohingya foot on Thai soil. If the boat people were starving, hard cheese. Er, tough luck.
There was plenty of advice from abroad. From America, officials said they would love to see all boat people pampered and cared for. Australia said much the same, just not on its shores. Then the US disclosed it had already resettled 1,000 Rohingya and will take the lead in convincing Western countries to resettle any people allowed to land. “Bravo USA” is a chant seldom heard in the past year.
The most galling appeal to Think of The Children came from the dying continent, even as the European Union was voting — not to shoo but to shoot refugee boats out of the water off Libya. With Apache helicopters. Then it became worse. The EU announced that soon it hopes to discuss — the EU’s phrase — “the level of collateral damage considered acceptable”.
According to the European-English module at Google Translate this means: The EU is down with killing some refugees but will decide later exactly how many.
So Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia aren’t all that grateful for Europe’s advice. “Let them eat kaka” might be mean, but it’s a moral step above “let them eat lead”.
Last week’s diplomatic credit belonged to Malaysia. Rather than wait for this week’s Bangkok conference, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman convinced Thailand’s Gen Tanasak Patimapragorn and Indonesia’s Retno Marsudi to fly to Kuala Lumpur for a three-way confab. After that closed-door meeting, Ms Marsudi dropped her hard-line stance against even helping boat people, and Gen Tanasak agreed Thailand would temporarily allow Rohingya ashore. Then Mr Aman was off to Myanmar to try to lighten up that deeply racist and hateful government through his counterpart Wunna Maung Lwin.
By Wednesday, Myanmar piously recognised the tragedy of the situation and of course — as a humane government devoted to human rights — would help any Rohingya it came across who were clearly drowning. On Friday it halted two boatloads of 208, and dumped them back in Rakhine.
Which sets the stage for Friday’s Bangkok conference.
The official line last week was that Malaysia had announced it would allow no Rohingya to land, and it sent coastal patrol boats out to try to enforce that. This is fact, but it’s the wrong slant. Malaysia has been welcoming migrants from neighbouring countries for years, based only on their religion, chiefly Khmer Cham and Myanmar-origin Rohingya.
Kuala Lumpur’s policies have been a powerful “pull” for Muslims of Myanmar and Cambodia considering whether to try to make a new start in another country. Myanmar can (and should) not escape several types of punishment for its shameful treatment of citizens. Malaysia, however, held out a brass ring for self-described refugees to flee their own countries.
For largely the same reason that Malaysia has been quietly offering resettlement for decades, The Gambia last Thursday offered to take all Rohingya. Authorities in Banjul cited a “sacred duty” to Islam. Told by a reporter of the generous offer, a happy Rohingya man said he had just one question: “What’s a Gambia?”
Gen Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha has confirmed that Thailand has added a new clause to its “No Rohingya wanted” signs. The new phrase, after the US announcement, is, “Shelter, no home”.
Immigration police stations will now house or supervise new camps for Rohingya migrants. Officially, there’s no time limit. Unofficially, Gen Prayut figures they will be gone to third countries in six months. If not, then ... we’ll cross that bridge later.
The worst possibility this coming weekend is that the meeting will descend into “not our fault” finger-pointing. That said, the Rohingya are not fleeing Myanmar because they are content, employed and well treated by their government. Daniel Blinken, the blunt-spoken US State Department’s point man, said: “The root of the problem is the political and social situation on the ground.”
The most prominent member of the Myanmar ruling class, elected MP and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, illustrates this problem. She refused to condemn Buddhist violence against the Rohingya and refers to them off-handedly as stateless and therefore unworthy of support. Changing Myanmar’s mind will be tough, to say the least.