The Boat Of Starving Rohingya Refugees That No Country Will Take In

[polly7]

The emaciated faces of hundreds of refugees found adrift in Thai waters on Thursday spoke volumes about the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in South Asia.

Reporters on Thursday found about 400 refugees from Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority crammed aboard a wooden fishing boat in the Andaman Sea, desperate for food and water.

The refugees said they had been at sea for almost three months and had fled persecution in their home country. They had hoped to reach Malaysia but were turned away by Malay authorities. Six days ago, smugglers abandoned their ship, and ten people had already perished onboard, refugees said.

Christophe Archambault, a photographer for Agence France Presse, captured the harrowing scenes onboard the ship, and the desperate scramble for supplies that were eventually dropped by the Thai military.

?2
Rohingya refugees are pictured on a boat off the southern Thai island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman Sea on May 14, 2015.

Aid groups say at least 6,000 refugees -- and perhaps many times that number -- have been drifting for days and months in the waters between Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. They were abandoned with little food and water by human traffickers after a regional crackdown on smuggling networks. Most are Rohingya Muslims who are stateless in Myanmar and Bangladeshis trying to escape poverty.

?2
Rohingya migrants sit on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe, May 14, 2015.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/boat-people-photos_n_7283178.html?ir=WorldPost


We've lost all sense of humanity. The rich get richer and pass treaties and laws to ensure they maintain and increase their massive wealth, while we have these starving people just begging for anyone to allow them in. We're like rats going after the last bit of resources while people like these are completely expendable. It makes me so sick.

[yeoman6987]

1. The countries turning them away are not rich

We are rich and take in many refugees a year. In fact most rich countries do. Italy takes in quite a few. Maybe the Scandanavian countries should volunteer since they have a great social program. Just a thought.

[polly7]

2. You might want to ask yourself why so many countries are so poorly off they

can't take these people in.

Just a thought.

[yeoman6987]

3. I gather their governments are not good

I would imagine many of them are involved in drugs and human trafficking and other ugly things. So if we took them in, how many would you accept into your home?

[polly7]

4. Thousands of Rohingya Migrants Remain Stranded at Sea

Published 16 May 2015

“What we have now is a game of maritime Ping-Pong,” says the IOM, as several countries have now denied entry to thousands of migrants.

Hundreds of Rohingya migrants fleeing violence in Myanmar remain stranded at sea on rickety fishing boats as neighboring countries refuse to allow them onto their territory, in what the UN has labelled “maritime Ping-Pong with human life.”

Thailand is the latest country to refuse entry to the migrants. After Thai officials offered a boat load of people food and water Friday, they then assisted the boat's departure farther out to sea.

The migrants have been at sea for weeks, and facing an increasingly desperate situation since they are believed to have very little food or water and are living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. Anywhere from 6,000 to 20,000 migrants are thought to be stranded on various boats, with hundreds piled into each vessel.

A wooden, green and red fishing boat carrying several hundred people was spotted Thursday adrift between Thailand and Malaysia.

Full article: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Thousands-of-Rohingya-Migrants-Remain-Stranded-at-Sea-20150516-0011.html

[Duppers]

5. K & R

[polly7]

6. Bumping this d/t the Myanmar election results .......

hoping they will finally be recognized and afforded legal protection.

The Boat Of Starving Rohingya Refugees That No Country Will Take In

The emaciated faces of hundreds of refugees found adrift in Thai waters on Thursday spoke volumes about the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in South Asia.

Reporters on Thursday found about 400 refugees from Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority crammed aboard a wooden fishing boat in the Andaman Sea, desperate for food and water.

The refugees said they had been at sea for almost three months and had fled persecution in their home country. They had hoped to reach Malaysia but were turned away by Malay authorities. Six days ago, smugglers abandoned their ship, and ten people had already perished onboard, refugees said.

Christophe Archambault, a photographer for Agence France Presse, captured the harrowing scenes onboard the ship, and the desperate scramble for supplies that were eventually dropped by the Thai military.

?2
Rohingya refugees are pictured on a boat off the southern Thai island of Koh Lipe in the Andaman Sea on May 14, 2015.

Aid groups say at least 6,000 refugees -- and perhaps many times that number -- have been drifting for days and months in the waters between Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. They were abandoned with little food and water by human traffickers after a regional crackdown on smuggling networks. Most are Rohingya Muslims who are stateless in Myanmar and Bangladeshis trying to escape poverty.

?2
Rohingya migrants sit on a boat drifting in Thai waters off the southern island of Koh Lipe, May 14, 2015.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/14/boat-people-photos_n_7283178.html?ir=WorldPost


The Rohingya - Adrift on a Sea of Sorrows

By Eric Margolis

May 31, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - When is genocide not really genocide? When the victims are small, impoverished brown people no wants or cares about – Burma’s Rohingya.

Their plight has finally commanded some media attention because of the suffering of Rohingya boat people, 7,000 of whom continue to drift in the waters of the Andaman Sea without food, water or shelter from the intense sun. At least 2,500 lucky refugees are in camps in Indonesia.

Mass graves of Rohingya are being discovered in Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). Large numbers of Rohingya are fleeing for their lives from their homeland, Burma, while the world does nothing. Burma is believed to have some 800,000 Rohingya citizens.

This week, the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Peace Prize winners call on Burma and its much ballyhooed ‘democratic leader,’ Aung San Suu Kyi, to halt persecution of the Rohingya. They did nothing.

Full article: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42008.htm

?itok=MwUi9KOJ
More than 100,000 Rohingyas tried to escape Burma on boats in the last year. (Photo/endgenocide.org)

Thailand wants no Rohyingas; Indonesia says only a few thousand on a temporary basis. Australia, which is not overly fond of non-whites, say no. Bangladesh can’t even feed its own wretched people. So the poor Rohyingas are a persecuted people without a country, adrift on a sea of sorrows.

What of the Muslim world? What of that self-proclaimed “Defender of the Faith. Saudi Arabia?” The Saudis are just buying $109 billion worth of US arms which they can’t use, but they don’t have even a few pennies for their desperate co-religionists in the Andaman Sea. The Holy Koran enjoins Muslims to aid their brethren wherever they are persecuted – this is the true essence of jihadism.

But the Saudis are too busy plotting against Iran, bombing Yemen, and supporting rebels in Iraq and Syria, or getting ready for their summer vacations in Spain and France, to think about fellow Muslims dying of thirst. Pakistan, which could help, has not, other than offering moral support. Neither has India, one of the world’s leading Muslim nations.

In the end, it may be up to the United States to rescue the Rohyinga, just as it rescued Bosnia and Kosovo. That’s fine with me. I don’t want the US to be the world’s policeman; I want it to be the world’s rescuer, its SOS force, its liberator.

We should tell Burma to halt its genocide today, or face isolation and sanctions from the outside world.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/30/rohingya-adrift-sea-sorrows



Mass graves of Rohingya Muslim migrants found in abandoned jungle camps in Malaysia

AGENCY Sunday 24 May 2015

Malaysian police have discovered mass graves in more than a dozen abandoned camps used by human traffickers on the border with Thailand, where Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar have been held.

"These graves are believed to be a part of human trafficking activities involving migrants," Home Minister Zahid Hamidi told reporters.

He did not say how many bodies have been recovered.

The Malaysian newspaper The Star has reported that as many as 100 bodies were found at one camp.

Similar camps and dozens of remains were recovered in jungle camps across the border in Thailand earlier this month, where Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar had been held by traffickers until their families could pay for their freedom.

Full article: http://world.einnews.com/article/267110665/j47hG4-1JDja11R7


"The Rohingya people - often described as one of the most persecuted people on earth"

[polly7]

8. Rohingya and the Burmese Generals

How to Forge a Democracy and Get Away with It

by Ramzy Baroud / November 18th, 2015

The Rohingya population of Arakan, estimated at nearly 800,000, subsist between the nightmare of having no legal status (as they are still denied citizenship), little or no rights and the occasional ethnic purges carried out by their neighbors. While Buddhists also paid a price for the clashes, the stateless Rohingya, being isolated and defenseless, were the ones to carry the heaviest death toll and destruction.

One of these nationalist groups is the Arakan National Party (ANP), which has incited and enacted violent pogroms against the Rohingya for years. In fact, ethnically cleansing the Rohingya is a main rally cry for a group which now has a democratically elected 29 national level representatives in Rakhine, and is also in “decisive control of the state’s regional assembly,” according to Reuters.

The sad fact is that much of the reporting on the Burmese elections stoked false hope that a democracy has finally prevailed in that country, and either brushed over or completely ignored the plight of the Rohingya altogether.

With Burma climbing to the world top five countries in terms of proven oil and gas reserves, terms such as genocides, military juntas and human rights are abruptly and largely omitted from the new discourse.

Indeed, a whole new narrative is being conveniently drafted, written jointly by the Burmese army, nationalist parties, Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD, western investors and anyone else who stands to benefit from the treasures of one of the world’s worst human rights violators.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/rohingya-and-the-burmese-generals/#more-60522

Well, so much for hoping for change with the recent election.