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Breakthrough in Asian migrant crisis as Indonesia and Malaysia agree to help Indonesia and Malaysia agree to offer 7,000 migrants temporary shelter
(about 5 hours later)
Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to provide temporary shelter to thousands of migrants stranded at sea in the first breakthrough in the humanitarian crisis confronting south-east Asia. Malaysia and Indonesia have said they will offer shelter to 7,000 refugees and migrants adrift at sea in rickety boats but made clear that their assistance was temporary and they would take no more.
The announcement was made on Wednesday by the Malaysian foreign minister, Anifah Aman, after a meeting with his counterpart from Indonesia and Thailand to address the plight of the migrants. More than 3,000 have landed so far this month in Malaysia and Indonesia. Together with Thailand, the two south-east Asian countries have pushed away many boats that approached their shores despite appeals from the United Nations to take them in.
Most of them are the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar and others are Bangladeshis fleeing poverty. Related: 'We helped out of solidarity': Indonesian fishermen come to aid of boat migrants
Anifah said the two countries agreed to give the estimated 7,000 stranded migrants temporary shelter “provided that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international community”. While the latest statement signalled a shift in policy by Malaysia and Indonesia that would allow the migrants to come ashore, they underlined that the international community also had a responsibility to help them deal with the crisis.
“I urge all NGOs, of all races and religions to step forward to volunteer to help these Rohingya migrants,” Malaysia’s home minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, said. The migrants are Rohingya Muslims from Burma and Bangladeshis – who fled persecution and poverty at home or were abducted by traffickers, and now face sickness and starvation at sea.
“Even though they are a migrant community that is trying to enter the country illegally, and breaking immigration laws, their wellbeing should not be ignored.” Related: 'They hit us, with hammers, by knife': Rohingya migrants tell of horror at sea
The breakthrough came as hundreds more starving people were rescued off the Indonesian coast on Wednesday and Burma for the first time offered to help in the crisis which has been blamed in part on its treatment of the ethnic Rohingya minority. “What we have clearly stated is that we will take in only those people in the high sea,” the Malaysian foreign minister, Anifah Aman, said. “But under no circumstances would we be expected to take each one of them if there is an influx of others.”
Following appeals by the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, and Washington last week for the Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants to be rescued, Pope Francis also issued his first comments on the issue on Tuesday, likening the plight of the “poor Rohingya” to that of Christian and ethnic Yazidi people brutalised by the Islamic State group. Malaysia and Indonesia said in a joint statement in Kuala Lumpur that they would offer resettlement and repatriation, a process that would be “done in a year by the international community”. Aman said temporary shelters would be set up, but not in Thailand, a favoured transit point for the migrants who try to make their way to work illegally in Malaysia.
About 3,000 people have already swum to shore or been rescued off Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand over the past 10 days after a Thai crackdown disrupted long-established smuggling routes, prompting some of the gangs responsible to abandon their human cargo at sea. Thai officials have said authorities will check on migrants at sea and will allow the sick to come ashore for medical attention, but the government has stopped short of saying whether it would allow others to disembark.
A total of 426 migrants believed to be from Burma were rescued in the early hours of Wednesday off Aceh in Indonesia, local officials said. Thailand, whose foreign minister also attended the meeting in the Malaysian capital, has called a regional conference on the issue in Bangkok for next week.
“Their condition is very weak. Many are sick, they told me that some of their friends died from starvation,” said Teuku Nyak Idrus, a local fishermen involved in the rescue. “We maintain our stance that we are a transit country. In the meeting we said that our country has more problems than theirs,” the Thai prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, said. “On whether we will accept or not accept more migrants you have to wait until 29 May when various organisations and countries will meet.”
Those saved in the Malacca strait between Malaysia and Indonesia’s Sumatra island included 30 children and 26 women, he added. Hours before the ministers met to discuss a crisis on which the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) has barely commented, hundreds of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis landed in Indonesia’s Aceh province.
With food and water supplies running low, some boats have drifted back and forth as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand refused to accept them, drawing international condemnation. “We have to find ways to resettling them as soon as possible without creating a new moral hazard,” Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a political adviser to Indonesia’s vice-president, said. “If migrants start thinking of Indonesia as a transit point or as having a higher chance of getting resettled, that would create another problem that we have to prevent.”
Burma also has come under growing pressure to help stem the outflow of Muslim Rohingya, who are fleeing their homes in the country’s western Rakhine state after years of violence and discrimination at the hands of the Buddhist majority. Most head for Muslim-majority Malaysia. She added that the main responsibility lay with Burma. The UN said last weekthe Burmese government must end the persecution of Rohingya Muslims if the pattern of migration from the corner of the Bay of Bengal into the Andaman Sea and Malacca Strait is to stop.
Burma state media quoted a foreign ministry statement on Wednesday saying the government “shares concerns” expressed by the international community and is “ready to provide humanitarian assistance to anyone who suffered in the sea”. Most of Burma’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in apartheid-like conditions. Almost 140,000 were displaced in clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.
That marked the most conciliatory statement yet from the Burmese government, which considers Rohingya to be foreigners from neighbouring Bangladesh and disavows all responsibility for them. Rangoon labels Rohingya Muslims as “Bengalis”, a name most Rohingya reject because it implies they are immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh despite having lived in Burma for generations.
Burma has previously said it may snub Thailand’s call for a regional summit on the issue, and was not present at Wednesday’s meeting of foreign ministers in Malaysia. “We have a big desire to help but this is not just Indonesia’s responsibility. This is mainly the responsibility of the Burmese government, which should be protecting all its citizens and not forcing some of them to flee,” Anwar said.
In a mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis compared the Rohingya to those victimised in the Islamic State group’s brutal jihad in Syria and Iraq. On Wednesday, Burma’s foreign ministry said the government was making “serious efforts” to prevent people smuggling and illegal migration.
“We think of the poor Rohingya of Myanmar. As they leave their land to escape persecution they do not know what will happen to them,” he said. This included patrolling by the navy and air force in Burma’s territorial waters, it said, adding that the country was prepared to work with the international community to alleviate the suffering of smuggled victims.
The UN’s refugee agency told AFP on Tuesday it had received reports that at least 2,000 migrants had been stranded at sea for weeks on boats near the Burma-Bangladesh coasts.
They are being held on board amid horrid conditions by human traffickers who are demanding payment from the passengers to release them, a spokeswoman said.