One year on, no justice for the ‘boat crisis’ survivors and human trafficking victims
Opinion: By Ziaur Rahman
Still
survivors are deteriorating in sub-human conditions with constant
threat to life and liberty. With no legislation for the protection of
boat survivors and kidnapped victims, they are suffering and human
rights abuses continue. Governments are failing to protect survivors
and UNHCR is failing to register and give protection to the
survivors. So many human rights groups have discussed these concerns
with EU and US officials as well as other members of the diplomatic
community. Still there is no investigations and protection for
survivors.
Rohingya
refugees are being kept in indefinite detention. Hundreds of refugees
who survived the 15th May 2015 boat crisis in South East Asia have
been locked up in poor conditions in Malaysia ever since. Survivors
need urgent action to stop detaining those out of prison and release
detainees from prison and detention camp and start implementing
genuine protections and urgent solutions, especially for human
trafficking and kidnapped victims.
After
harrowing footage of desperate refugees and migrants stranded at sea
was beamed around the world last May, Malaysia agreed to accept 1,100
people. Almost 400 of those were identified as Rohingya
refugees–people fleeing persecution in Myanmar. One year on, the
majority of the Rohingya remain in Malaysia’s Belentik Detention
Centre (IDC).
So
who is investigating the fate of the boat crisis survivors? Women,
men and children fled from persecution in Myanmar only to undergo the
horror of being abandoned at sea by the unscrupulous gangs who run
the sea routes. Malaysia should have been their place of safety but
instead they have spent a year in detention with no end in sight.
In
Malaysia, generally Rohingya refugees are suffering from detention,
lack of education, poverty, and illegalness, who are mostly victims
of human trafficking and many of them are still in detention camps.
I, as a refugee, am calling those who are concerned to take action
for the immediate release of the survivors and to work with
international partners to ensure they are given the protection they
are entitled to under international law.
Another
matter of concern is that among those survivors, though some of them
has their spouses, siblings, children or parents in Malaysia and they
were caught while they were trying to come to meet their partners or
relatives by the help of human traffickers, they are being resettled
in third country especially USA, and their request to stay with their
life partners or relatives is ignored.
The
15th May 2015 Andaman Sea ‘boat crisis’ claimed global attention
when dozens of boats carrying thousands of desperate people were
abandoned at sea and the governments of Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia refused to allow them to disembark. Malaysia and Indonesia
eventually accepted a total of three boats carrying more than 2,900
refugees and migrants. They agreed to provide temporary shelter to
the group for a one-year time frame provided they would be resettled
or repatriated by the international community within that period. To
date, approximately 36 Rohingya refugees from the boat survivors
group in Malaysia were resettled to the USA on last 26th May 2016.”
