Human Rights Watch Calls for Aid to Burma Refugees in India

VOA News

Rights group, Human Rights Watch, is calling for India to provide access to the United Nations to assist up to 100,000 Burmese ethnic Chin who have fled persecution and poverty in Burma. Human Rights Watch accuses Burma's military government of wide-ranging rights abuses in Chin state.

A Human Rights Watch report is calling for Burma's military, known as the Tatmadaw, to halt ongoing human rights abuses against the ethnic Chin - a largely Christian community living in western Burma. The three-year investigation of those who had fled persecution and are living in India, Thailand, and Malaysia said Burma's military regularly imprisoned ethnic Chin to stifle political dissent.

Chin state is one of Burma's most remote and poorest regions, bordering India's Mizoram State. Official access to the border regions in Mizoram is restricted by the Indian authorities.

Report researcher and writer Amy Alexander says abuses by Burma's military had gone largely under reported.

"Human Rights Watch has documented widespread killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and mistreatment, forced labor, reprisals against the opposition, restrictions on movement, freedom of expression and religious freedom, as well as extortion and confiscation of personal property," she said.

Cases cited included those of political prisoners, their hands tied, being hung from ceilings and beaten with sticks. Later cloths were placed over their faces and they were dunked into water until they lost consciousness. Over the years up to 100,000 Chin have fled into India's Mizoram state, where they are at risk of discrimination and abuse by local groups and deportation to Burma. A campaign in 2003 lead to 10,000 Chin being sent back to Burma. Human Rights Watch says those people who are sent back often face detention and even death.

Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher Sara Colm said about 4,000 Chin have trekked 1,600 kilometers to New Delhi to seek refugee status.

"We have people fleeing really repressive human rights situations in Burma to India and there is no access to them by the UNHCR," she said.

"We are calling today for pressure to be brought to bear on the Indian government to allow United Nations officials access to the border regions of Burma on a permanent basis and not force asylum seekers to have to make the long trek down to New Delhi."

The director of the Chin Human Rights Organization, Salai Bawi Lian Mang, welcomed the report.

"I hope it will mark a great impact and it shows how serious the situation in Burma is," he said.

"In Chin State people suffer religious persecution - 90 percent of Chin is Christian and then the Burmese Government has been systematically persecuting Chin Christian for the past two decades."

The report called for the Association of South East Asian Nations, European Union, and the United States to increase pressure on Burma to improve humanitarian assistance to the Chin.

Burma/India: End abuses in Chin state

ReliefWeb

(Bangkok, January 28, 2009) – Burma's military government should end human rights abuses against the ethnic Chin population in Burma's western Chin state, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch also called on the Indian government and newly elected Mizoram state government to extend protection to Chin who have fled to neighboring India to escape ongoing abuses and severe repression in Burma.

In the 93-page report, "'We Are Like Forgotten People': Unsafe in Burma, Unprotected in India," Human Rights Watch documents a wide range of human rights abuses carried out by the Burmese army and government officials. The abuses include forced labor, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, religious repression and other restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

In Mizoram state, India, Chin people remain at risk of discrimination and abuse by local Mizo groups and local authorities, and of being forced back across the border into Burma.

"For too long, ethnic groups like the Chin have borne the brunt of abusive military rule in Burma," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"It is time for this brutal treatment to stop and for the army to be held to account for its actions. India should step forward to protect those desperately seeking sanctuary."

This detailed report is based on extensive research carried out from 2005 to 2008. Human Rights Watch conducted about 140 interviews, some with Chin currently living in Chin state, but who cross the border to Mizoram for trade. Others interviewed have fled the country permanently, most in recent years. It provides a rare glimpse into the plight of Burma's "forgotten people."

Burma's military government regularly arrests and imprisons ethnic Chin to stifle political dissent and intimidate them. The army places restrictions on many aspects of life for the Chin, including: curtailing their freedom of movement; regularly confiscating and extorting money, food, and property; exacting forced labor, and coercing them to plant certain crops. One Chin man told Human Rights Watch, "We are like slaves, we have to do everything [the army] tells us to do."

"We Are Like Forgotten People" also documents abuses committed by the opposition Chin National Front and its armed branch, the Chin National Army, such as harassment, beatings and extortion from Chin villagers.

One Chin church leader now living in Mizoram said, "These underground groups, rather than being a help, make life even more difficult for us."

Human Rights Watch called on both the Burmese army and armed groups to end abuses, and for Burma's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to allow humanitarian agencies unfettered access to Chin State.

Chin farmers and their families regularly are forced to leave their fields to porter goods for the Burmese army, build roads, and construct army barracks, sentry posts, and other military buildings. This undermines the ability of Chin people to survive in one of Burma's poorest states, particularly in areas suffering food shortages and famine caused by a massive rat infestation. The Burmese government's aid restrictions hamper humanitarian agencies trying to provide relief to populations at risk.

"The famine in Chin state is a natural disaster, and aid restrictions and demands for forced labor are only making the situation worse," said Pearson.

Abuses have led tens of thousands of Chin to flee Burma, with many crossing the border to neighboring Mizoram state in India without documents. But local voluntary organizations and government officials in Mizoram have at times forcibly evicted Chin and returned them to Burma.

This violates India's obligations under international law not to return people to a country where their lives or freedoms could be threatened, or where they could be at risk of persecution. Although many of the Chin who flee Burma would qualify as refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is barred from accessing the Chin population living along the border, so only those who make the 2,460 kilometer trek to UNHCR's office in Delhi can file their claims. India is not a party to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees but it has signed the Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.

Chin who manage to remain in Mizoram also face religious repression and severe discrimination in access to housing and education.

Human Rights Watch called on the Indian government to protect Chin asylum-seekers and refugees, and to give UNHCR access to Mizoram state to register them. On December 2, 2008, Mizoram state elections resulted in a sweeping victory for the Indian National Congress, the country's governing party, which has not been in power there for a decade. In the past, members of Mizoram's Indian National Congress have called for action against Chin migrants and have been even less sympathetic than the previous state government to the plight of those fleeing human rights abuses in Burma.

"Instead of ignoring the plight of the Chin, the Indian government should protect them and prevent any actions or initiatives to forcibly return them to Burma," said Pearson, "It will be a test for the new state government of Mizoram to address ongoing discrimination against the Chin."

The report also calls on members of the international community such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the United States and the European Union to increase humanitarian assistance to Chin state, provided it can be delivered without unnecessary interference from Burma's military government, and to strengthen targeted sanctions if Burma does not meet specific human rights conditions.

"The Chin are unsafe in Burma, and unprotected in India, but just because these abuses happen far from Delhi and Rangoon does not mean the Chin should remain 'forgotten people'," said Pearson. "ASEAN, the EU and the US should tell Burma and India that it long past time for these abuses to end."

Selected accounts from ethnic Chin interviewed for the report

"The army has called me many times to porter, more than 10 times. When I cannot carry their bags, they beat me. [The soldiers] get angry and slap us and kick us. They tell us to go faster. Normally, I'd have to porter for two to three days. It's not possible to refuse. One time I tried to refuse to go because I was so tired and the things we are made to carry are very heavy. When I tried to refuse, they beat me. They said: 'You are living under our authority. You have no choice. You must do what we say.'"

– Chin woman from Thantlang township, Chin state, Burma

"[The police] beat me with a stick and they used the butt of their guns. They hit me in my mouth and broke my front teeth. They split my head open and I was bleeding badly. Repeatedly, they hit me in my back with their guns. Because of this, my back is still injured and I have trouble lifting heavy objects. They also shocked me with electricity. They had a battery and they attached some clips to my chest. They would turn the electricity on and when I couldn't control my body any longer, they switched the battery off. They kept doing this for several hours. They did the same thing to the pastor's son. They told me they would only stop beating us when we told them information about the CNA [Chin National Army]. We kept telling them we didn't know anything."

– A Chin man from Sagaing division, Burma, describing how the police arrested, tortured, and detained him for three days after being accused of having affiliations with the Chin National Army

"Many times the SPDC force us to give them our chicken or rice. They come and ask for these things. If we don't give it freely to them, they just take it. They will kill our chickens in front of us and take it all."

– An 18-year-old girl from Matupi township, Chin state, who left Burma in 2008

"[Some Mizo residents] take advantage of our position and demand money, threatening that if we don't pay up they'll inform the police or the YMA [Young Mizo Association]. There are some Mizos who simply just hate the sight of us and challenge us or threaten to beat us up. Life is hell for us. We cannot protect ourselves, as this will cause further furor. We have to just make ourselves seem small and avoid these dangers. To be Burmese is to face discrimination."

– Chin woman living in Mizoram, India

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Human rights group calls on India to give access to Chin refugees

The Earth Time

Bangkok - Human Rights Watch called Wednesday on the Indian government to allow international access to 75,000 to 100,000 Chin refugees who have fled famine, forced labour, and political and religious persecution in western Myanmar.

In what it described as a "template for how repression works" in rural Myanmar, the New York-based rights group for the first time documented the overlooked plight of the majority-Christian Chin minority group in the country also known as Burma in a 93-page report, entitled We are Like Forgotten People: Unsafe in Burma, Unprotected in India.

"Just because these abuses happen far from Delhi and Rangoon does not mean the Chin should remain forgotten people," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"ASEAN, the EU and the US should tell Burma and India that it is long past the time for these abuses to end," she said, referring to the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member.

Harassment and torture by the Myanmar army, which now has 15 battalions in Chin state; a recent famine caused by rats; government labour conscriptions; and demand for food by both government and rebel troops have caused untold miseries in the remote, mountainous state, which has long been ignored by the international community, the report charged.

The report took three years to compile and was based on the testimony of 140 Chin refugees interviewed in India, Thailand and Malaysia.

Harsh conditions in Chin state have caused an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Chin to flee to Mizoram state in eastern India, another 30,000 to Malaysia and 500 to Thailand.

The Chin have faced persecution not only in Myanmar but also in India, where local politicians have shown little sympathy for the refugees.

"Life is hell for us," a Chin woman living in Mizoram told Human Rights Watch.

"We have to make ourselves seem small and avoid dangers. To be Burmese is to face discrimination."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been denied access to the border region in Mizoram, said Sara Colm, one of the chief compilers of the report.

"We are calling today for pressure to be brought to bear on the Indian government to allow UN officials access to border regions on a permanent basis," Colm said a press conference in Bangkok.

Currently, Chins seeking refugee status on the basis of political or religious persecution must travel more than 1,400 kilometres from the border to New Delhi to apply with the UN office there.

"The Chin deserve a shot at meeting the UN officials to assess their asylum chances," Colm said. While faulting the Indian government for not providing access to the refugees, Human Rights Watch blamed Myanmar's military regime for failing to address the Chins' problems, and in fact aggravating them.

"The government has done nothing to respond to the poverty and food shortages in the Chin state," said Amy Alexander, another of the report's compliers. "In fact, the army makes it worse by demanding food and money from the people in the Chin state.

After a recent visit to the state, the UN's World Food Programme concluded that residents suffered one of the worst food situations in the region. Famine has been declared in the state, caused by an infestation of rats.

The researchers acknowledged that a similar lack of concern for people's welfare was demonstrated by the Myanmar junta in other states and against other minority groups.

The plight of the Rohingya, a minority group in Myanmar's Arakan state, which borders Chin state, has come to international attention this month after Thai authorities were accused of towing 1,000 Rohingya boat people out to sea and setting them adrift in boats without engines or adequate food.

The hardships faced by both the Chin and the Rohingya have been less well-publicized than the plight of the Karen, another Myanmar minority group based in eastern Myanmar near the border with Thailand.

Pictures 'prove' that Burma refugees were left to die at sea

A picture obtained by CNN is believed to show migrants being towed out to sea

TIMES ONLINE

Pressure is mounting on the Thai Government to reveal the truth about allegations that its military towed hundreds of Burmese refugees out to sea and abandoned them. The demands come after photographs emerged apparently showing soldiers caught in the act.

The pictures, obtained by CNN from someone directly involved in the operation, showed the refugees being rounded up on a Thai beach and towed out to sea in flimsy boats.

Human rights groups believe that up to 600 members of the ethnic Rohingya minority drowned after being caught by the Thai military while fleeing persecution in their native Burma. Nearly 1,000 migrants are known to have set off from the Burmese coast in two groups last month but there are fears that many more are missing.

Several hundred survivors have been rescued off the Indian Andaman Islands and the coast of Indonesia after drifting for days without food, water or engines.

The Thai whistleblower said that the migrants had been provided with food and water, but confirmed that the boats were towed for two days into international waters before they were set adrift by Thai soldiers wishing to deter them from seeking refuge in Thailand.

More than 230,000 members of the Burmese Muslim minority group have taken refuge in Bangladesh after fleeing their country and thousands of others have ended up in Malaysia.

The UN refugee agency said a formal request for access to 126 more Rohingyas believed to be in Thai military custody had gone unanswered, prompting fears that they may also have been dumped at sea.

“We don't know where they are,” Kitty McKinsey, a UNHCR spokeswoman, said. The new photographic evidence is backed up by statements from survivors in India, Indonesia and Thailand.

Iqbal Hussein, a survivor who made it back to the Thai shore, told CNN that five of the six boats his group was travelling in sank after being towed out to sea.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Malaysians, Thai officials trafficking Burmese migrants ?

IPS news

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 26 (IPS) - A scandalous trade in Burmese migrant labour involving Malaysian and Thai officials and international human traffickers is now coming to light. Like thousands of Burmese migrant workers That Zin Myint travelled overland from Rangoon to Bangkok and reached the Thai border where local syndicates, for a hefty bribe, helped him cross into northern Malaysia and move overland to the capital where cheap, unskilled labour is in great demand.

‘’Don’t take my photographs... they will come after me,’’ Zin Myint said, referring to Malaysian authorities who now closely monitor local and overseas publications for anti-Malaysia sentiments expressed by migrant workers.

On arrival Zin Myint ‘celebrated’ with others from his village and joined some three million - documented and undocumented - Asian migrant workers who live and work here in deplorable conditions.

An estimated 150,000 of these workers are Burmese migrant workers, many of them Kachins and Muslim Rohingyas from Burma’s northern Rakhine region.

‘’We Burmese migrants are sold like fish and vegetables,’’ Myint told IPS in an interview in Pudu market, a big wet market in the capital where Burmese migrant workers predominate.

Myint had been arrested, taken to the Thai border and officially ‘deported’ which actually means getting sold to human traffickers. ‘’I was robbed of all my cash by both Malaysian and Thai officials and sold to traffickers,’’ Myint told IPS.

‘’I was held in a jungle camp near the border for three weeks until my relatives bought me from the traffickers. I bribed my way back into Malaysia,’’ he said, adding that while conditions are tough in Malaysia, they are better than Burma or Thailand.

‘’There is food, work and a roof over my head.’’

Myint is one of the luckier ones to be arrested and ‘deported’ only once. He is now considered a leader in the Pudu area and much sought after by other Burmese workers for ‘assistance’ in avoiding arrest and deportation all over again.

Burmese migrant workers call the trade ‘’bwan’’ (thrown away) or one of the worst forms of human trafficking.

‘’Malaysia does not recognise key international agreements on the protection of refugees and foreign nationals. Nor does it apply to foreign migrants the same rights and legal protections given to Malaysian citizens,’’ said Irene Fernandez, executive director of Tenaganita, a rights NGO that protects migrant workers.

Human rights activists have long charged that immigration, police and other enforcement officials, including the unpopular voluntary force called RELA, have been ‘’trading’’ Burmese migrants, especially Rohingyas, to human traffickers in Thailand who then pass them on to deep sea fishing trawler operators in the South China Sea.

The women are generally sold into the sex industry.

‘’They are treated as a commodity and frequently bought and sold and we have been condemning this practise for a long time,’’ Fernandez said. ‘’Our demands have always fallen on deaf ears despite the accumulating evidence of the involvement of uniformed officials in the trade,’’ Fernandez told IPS.

It has become commonplace for the authorities to use the vigilante 'RELA' force to periodically arrest and ‘deport’ Rohingyas, but since Burma does not recognise them as citizens, the practise is to take them to the Bukit Kayu Hitam area on the Thai-Malaysia border and force them to cross over into Thailand.

‘’They are arrested, jailed and deported, but since they are stateless they are taken to the Thai border and often sold to Thai traffickers,’’ said Fernandez. Invariably, the ‘’deported’’

Rohingyas bribe Thai and Malaysian officials and return to Malaysia.

The accusation against corrupt Malaysian officials is long standing and made frequently by refugees, human rights activists, opposition lawmakers and is even the subject of one official probe.

Malaysian television channels have also investigated and exposed the ‘sale’ of the Rohingya refugees on the Malaysia-Thai border, although they did not finger Malaysian officials for fear of reprisals.

A U.S. probe being conducted into the trafficking by the powerful Senate foreign relations committee has stimulated interest in the plight of Rohingyas when its findings are relayed to key U.S. enforcement agencies and Interpol for possible action, Senate officials have said.

‘’U.S. Senate foreign relations committee staff are reviewing reports of extortion and human trafficking from Burmese and other migrants in Malaysia, allegedly at the hands of Malaysia government officials,’’ a staff official told international news agencies in early January.

‘’The allegations include assertions that Burmese and other migrants - whether or not they have UNHCR documentation - are taken from Malaysian government detention facilities and transported to the Thailand-Malaysia border,’’ the official had said. At the border, they alleged,

‘’money is demanded from them, or they are turned over to human traffickers in southern Thailand’’.

‘’If they pay, they return to Malaysia. If not, they are sold to traffickers,’’ the official said, adding that teams had visited Malaysia, Thailand and Burma to collect evidence on the human trade.

Some of the immigrants from Burma and other countries are refugees recognised by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which has an office in Kuala Lumpur.

Since 1995, about 40,000 Rohingya refugees from Burma have been settled in the U.S., most of them after passing through Malaysia, while the emigration applications of thousands more have been rejected by third countries.

"They are left stranded, unable to return to Myanmar (official name for Burma) where they face certain persecution by the military regime and rejected from immigrating to third countries," said opposition lawmaker Charles Santiago who has raised their plight in parliament.

"They need urgent help and understanding of their plight," he told IPS, urging Malaysia to sign U.N. refugee conventions and accord refugees due recognition.

"We can no longer close our eyes to their plight."

‘’We are trapped in a foreign country without papers and without recognition,’’ said Habibur Rahman, general secretary of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation Malaysia, an organisation that speaks for stateless Rohingyas in Malaysia.

‘’We have been looking for a way to escape this dilemma but without success,’’ he told IPS.

‘’We are denied citizenship and made stateless by the Myanmar military junta and persecuted and forced to flee to neighbouring countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh,’’ he said.

The involvement of the U.S. Senate in the issue has upset Malaysian officials who have warned the U.S. to ‘’take their hands off’’ the country, saying such action violated Malaysian sovereignty.

However, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has asked the U.S. to pass on information pertaining to the allegations, saying the government does not tolerate extortion from migrants by officials.

‘’The U.S. authorities have evidence we would be very thankful for, if they can pass the information to us for investigation and appropriate action,’’ he told Bernama, the official news agency, on Jan. 15.

An upset foreign minister Rais Yatim told local media on Jan. 19 that the allegations were ‘’baseless, ridiculous and farfetched’’.

‘’We are a civilised country. We are not living in barbaric times when people are sold off at the whims and fancies of people with power. It is certainly unfair of the U.S. Senate to accuse us of doing such outrageous things,’’ Yatim said. (END/2009)

Thailand calls conference on refugees

In this photo provided by the Indian Coast Guard, Guardsmen help illegal migrants off a barge in the Andaman islands, India, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. The Thai navy is alleged to have forced several hundred migrants onto a barge in the middle of the ocean, where as many as 300 later drowned. More than 100 were rescued by Indian authorities in the remote Andaman islands. (AP Photo/Indian Coast Guard, HO)

AP News

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Thailand offered Saturday to host a regional conference to prevent the mass migration — and resulting suffering — of refugees after the Thai navy was accused of brutally mistreating boat people from Bangladesh.

Foreign Ministry officials met envoys from India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Myanmar to discuss the exodus of refugees from camps in the impoverished South Asian nation, ministry spokesman Thani Thongpakdee said.

"We are also in talks with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees both in Thailand and in Geneva to help alleviate what these people are facing right now," he said.

Thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas — members of a stateless, Muslim ethnic group that fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar — leave Bangladesh aboard rickety boats each year in hopes of finding work elsewhere. One of the most popular migration routes in recent years was by boat to Thailand then overland to Malaysia.

Thailand has recently come under fire for allegedly mistreating those migrants.

Two migrants told a refugees' advocacy group they were among hundreds detained and beaten by Thai authorities on a remote island and abandoned in the Indian Ocean in boats with no engines and only a few bags of rice.

The Bangkok-based Arakan Project provided transcripts of the migrants' accounts to The Associated Press on Friday. It was the second time the group has released testimony from Bangladeshi and Rohingya illegal migrants who allege the Thai navy has left hundreds of them at sea twice since December. About 300 are believed to have drowned in one of the incidents. Thai military officials have repeatedly denied they forced migrants out to sea, insisting they only detain and then repatriate them.

The survivors who spoke to Arakan are jailed on India's remote Andaman islands, where they were taken after an Indian helicopter spotted them on an island.

According to their accounts, they were headed from Bangladesh to Thailand when their boats were intercepted around Dec. 27 by Thai naval ships. They were detained with hundreds of other migrants for several days on a deserted Thai island in the Andaman Sea.

The migrants said they survived on banana leaves and handfuls of rice and were beaten by guards whom they identified as Thai security forces.

The Thai government initially flatly denied the abuse charges, but Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has since said authorities will investigate the allegations.

Thailand meets regional ambassadors over refugee issue

BANGKOK (AFP) — A senior Thai official met ambassadors from neighbouring nations on Friday to discuss illegal immigration after allegations that the Thai army left desperate boat people on the open seas to die.

The allegations, apparently supported by photographs and witness accounts, have further dented the kingdom's tourist-friendly image, already marred by mass protests that shut down airports late last year.

The United Nations has expressed concern, but Thai authorities have denied any wrongdoing and say they are dealing with a "regional problem".

"The meeting discussed the issue of Rohingya and focused on exchanging operational guidelines and information relating to the Rohingya to seek a (common) solution on this issue," foreign ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat said.

Further discussions were proposed at the meeting, between the permanent secretary of Thailand's foreign ministry, Virasakdi Futrakul, and ambassadors from Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, he said.

"The meeting agreed that this issue is a regional problem that one country alone cannot solve," Tharit added.

Survivors and a human rights group have accused the Thai army and navy of detaining and beating up to 1,000 members of Myanmar's Rohingya minority late last year, before towing them out to sea with little food or water.

Nearly 650 Muslim Rohingya have been rescued in waters off India and Indonesia. Some told officials that they had been beaten in Thailand before being set adrift in barges with no engines or navigational equipment.

Myanmar effectively denies citizenship rights to the Muslim Rohingya minority in western North Rakhine state, leading to their abuse and exploitation, and forcing thousands to flee abroad, mainly to Bangladesh.

The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) said 80 of the migrants were being held on Koh Sai Daeng island off the Thai coast in the Andaman Sea. Another 46 have been handed over to the Thai military with no further information on their current location, it said.

On Tuesday the UN agency asked the Thai government for access to the 126 refugees to assess their needs.

But Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has so far rejected the request and an army colonel from Ranong who refused to be named denied on Friday that the military was holding any Rohingya refugees.

"We are not detaining any Rohingya people here," he told AFP.

The army has said it is investigating the incident, but spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said it followed proper immigration procedures.

"The Thai military has no duty to push those illegal migrants back (to sea). "If we find illegal migrants, we must follow the process -- detain them and inform the police. We transfer them to the police to proceed further," he said.

The remaining refugees rescued off Indonesia and India are still in detention.

India said Friday about 440 of the refugees had been ferried in from various islands of the Andaman archipelago to the capital Port Blair where they are being held in a high-security detention camp meant for maritime poachers.

A joint military-police probe was now under way to establish the identity of the Bengali-speaking men, Indian military spokesman Abhinav Bharve said.

"So far we have taken their version that they are Rohingya tribesmen, but we need to know who they exactly are," he added.

The UNHCR said it has made two written requests to the Indonesian government for access to 174 Rohingyas and 19 Bangladeshis being held at a naval base on Sumatra.

Indonesian authorities have so far refused the request but say the refugees are in good health and have been given humanitarian assistance.

Take trafficking of refugees seriously

The MALAYSIAN

Insider

JAN 22 — Although denial is a common political strategy, it is still a terrible disappointment when used by our leaders — especially when their actions can curb violent crime and alleviate the suffering of many.

Last week, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee drew attention to the trafficking of migrants and refugees at the Malaysia-Thai border. They highlighted the shocking fact that Malaysian law enforcement officials are complicit in the “sale” of people to human smugglers/traffickers.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar denied this flatly, referring to them as “wild accusations”. To his credit, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi provided a more diplomatic reply, stating that the government did not tolerate such a practice and requested for information to be passed on for further action.

Multiple attempts have been made to alert the Malaysian government about the “sale” of migrants and refugees, which is prohibited under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 2007. NTV7 did an expose on this issue on Siasat Mandarin on May 3, 2008. Charles Santiago, MP for Klang, raised this in Parliament, asking the Home Affairs Minister whether this report would be investigated. He was informed on Oct 22, 2008 that the Immigration Department had carried out investigations and “found no evidence to prove this accusation”. It said it was “baseless” and that it “very difficult to associate it directly with the activities of immigration officials”.

In September 2008, Tenaganita released a book entitled The Revolving Door that chronicles, in disturbing detail, the experiences of refugees from Myanmar who had been detained, subjected to degrading treatment, and sold. Over the past year, national and international human rights groups have also reported such accounts of trafficking.

What happens at the border?

Deportees who have returned to Malaysia describe that they are brought from immigration detention depots to locations at the border under guard and in handcuffs in vehicles. When they disembark, they are forced to walk into areas guarded by human smugglers/traffickers. They have no way of escape. They are caught and kept under armed surveillance in confined, crowded and isolated locations, often deep in the jungle. Some women are raped repeatedly.

They are given handphones and instructed to contact family/friends to raise money for their release; they are beaten and threatened into submission. Prices vary between RM1,400 and RM2,500. Some who have dared to question why prices are so high have been told that this covers the amount paid to immigration officials. They are told to deposit the money into specific bank accounts. Once the money is deposited, they are brought in cars to designated locations and released. It costs more to be sent back to Malaysia; some are released in Thailand.

Those who are unable to pay are sold — men to work on fishing boats and plantations, and women to brothels or “private owners” who keep them in servitude for sex and/or forced labour. Those who have been forced to work on boats tell harrowing tales of having seen fellow workers shot and thrown overboard if they protest.

Thousands get deported every year to the Malaysia-Thai border. Of these, it is unclear how many are sold and how much money is paid to law enforcement officials. What is clear, judging from the multiple testimonies provided by numerous deportees, is that these transactions are a systematic practice.

The greatest tragedy of all, particularly for refugees who are afraid of persecution if they are sent home, is that purchasing their freedom under such risky circumstances is a way for them to negotiate their own safety. It gives them a way out of the dark nightmare that began when they were arrested — to be sent back to Myanmar is far worse. If they are lucky, they are able to go through the process of recapture and return having only lost money, although this puts them in debt, exacerbating existing poverty.

There are only two alternatives to getting “sold”, and these are restricted to the few refugees already registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at the time of their arrest. This first is to stay detained indefinitely in immigration detention depots awaiting possible resettlement, which takes months (if not years) and is not guaranteed to all. They often endure harsh conditions — overcrowding, poor food, lack of access to healthcare, as well as violence and abuse from fellow detainees and guards. When the breadwinner of the family is arrested, their wives and children are left in abject poverty.

The second is to be released into the care of the UNHCR, which is sometimes done on an ad hoc basis for particularly vulnerable refugees — pregnant women, babies, unaccompanied minors, and the severely ill. Even this latter option is not guaranteed and is subject to the vagaries of immigration officials who may or may not grant releases.

What needs to be done to end the smuggling and trafficking of migrants and refugees?

The first is to stop arresting refugees. Malaysia has obligations to protect the rights of vulnerable populations as a member of the United Nations and of the Human Rights Council, as well as to care for refugee women and children under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The international committees overseeing these two conventions have made strong recommendations for the protection of migrants and refugees, which Malaysia has failed to implement.

Instead of ripping up UNHCR documents, Rela and immigration officials should follow existing protocols set by the police to verify the identities of refugees and release them. In addition, as many refugees are still unregistered, UNHCR officials should be given full access to all those in detention depots, prisons and police lock-ups who claim asylum, to verify if they are refugees in need of international protection. All refugees should be released so that they do not face indefinite detention, which is a breach of human rights.

The second is to review the current approach to handling irregular migrants in Malaysia, which has resulted in severe human rights abuses. Procedures for arrest, detention and deportation must be reviewed, and whipping, which constitutes torture, must be stopped immediately! Ironically, it is precisely Malaysia’s imbalanced migration policies and procedures that have contributed to the growth rather than reduction of irregular migrants. Streamlining procedures for the recruitment and regularisation of migrants and refugees will also help to stem the smuggling and trafficking industry, which flourishes in Malaysia.

Thirdly, the government needs to enforce the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act more rigorously. It needs to provide law enforcement officials, prosecutors, the judiciary and social workers with necessary training, skills and resources to execute their duties. It needs to ensure that the public is aware of what trafficking constitutes, and educate them on how to report incidents to the Bukit Aman Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in a confidential manner, and with witness protection if necessary, so that perpetrators are punished and victims freed.

Ignoring and denying multiple reports of crime from different, credible sources that say the same thing does not help us solve problems in society — if anything, it makes us complicit. What we need are leaders to take these issues seriously so that Malaysia combats trafficking effectively.

Alice Nah is a researcher who examines the interconnections between citizenship and migration. She is one of the coordinators of the Migration Working Group, a network of civil society groups and individuals advocating for the protection of the rights of migrants, refugees and stateless persons.

Thai PM vows crackdown on illegal immigrants

AFP News

BANGKOK (AFP) — Thailand's premier Thursday announced a crackdown on illegal immigration as he defended his country against allegations the military left a group of boat people to die on the open seas.

Survivors and a human rights group have accused the Thai army and navy of detaining and beating up to 1,000 members of the Rohingya minority from Myanmar late last year, before towing them out to sea with little food and water.

"We have to solve the illegal immigrant problem otherwise it will affect our security, economy and the opportunities of Thai labourers," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters.

"We will push them out of the country," he added.

He said the Thai government would especially target human traffickers as part of its efforts to keep out illegal immigrants.

"Many (Rohingya) came... more than enough to set up a community. We will be strict in cracking down on groups of people who facilitate illegal immigrants coming into Thailand," Abhisit said.

"Our problem is human trafficking. We have to investigate this issue and make our coastal security system more robust as there are multiple agencies looking after our coastline," he added.

Nearly 650 Muslim Rohingya have been rescued in waters off India and Indonesia. Some told officials that they had been beaten in Thailand before being set adrift in barges with no engines or navigational equipment.

The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) said Tuesday it had asked the Thai government for access to 126 of the refugees to assess their needs.

The UNHCR says 80 of the migrants were being held on Koh Sai Daeng island off the Thai coast in the Andaman Sea. Another 46 have been handed over to the Thai military with no further information on their current location, it said.

Abhisit has so far rejected the request but said the foreign ministry would meet with the UNHCR, saying he was pleased they were involved to "help solve the root cause of the problem" of illegal immigration.

Thailand's military says it is investigating the claims but insists it follows international standards in dealing with illegal immigrants.

The foreign ministry has announced it would meet with neighbouring countries in order to discuss the "regional problem" of Rohingya migration.

Myanmar refugees protest in front of UNHCR in Malaysia

Easy Bourse News

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)--At least 50 Myanmar refugees demonstrated Wednesday outside the United Nations refugee agency office to protest alleged discrimination by the U.N. organization. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, denied the claim by the action group All Burma Democratic Force.

The protesters, including women and children, held placards saying "We need better treatment from UNHCR," and "Our future depends on UNHCR." Anti-riot police were deployed, but there was no trouble.

Aung Kyaw Moe, 37, the protest group's spokesman, said UNHCR officials had discriminated against some of them.

"They divided us along ethnic group and won't allow some of us to enter the UNHCR office," he said, saying it was causing ethnic tension among the various refugee communities.

The UNHCR had said there were about 45,400 refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia, of whom 40,400 are from Myanmar, formerly called Burma.

The majority are Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar's Rakhine state, while the rest are Christian Chins, Karens and Shan.

The demonstrators in Kuala Lumpur demanded fair treatment from the U.N. body regardless of ethnicity or religion, especially regarding issues related to resettlement in third countries. The U.N. organization said it recognized their frustrations.

"UNHCR's policies towards all refugee groups are nondiscriminatory. We do our utmost to assist and protect all refugees," said Yante Ismail, the U.N. agency Kuala Lumpur office spokeswoman.

"The UNHCR will continue to engage different refugee communities to address their problems," she said.

UN seeks access to Myanmar refugees held in Thailand

REUTERS India

BANGKOK, Jan 20 (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency requested access on Tuesday to 126 Myanmar refugees held in southern Thailand, amid allegations of mistreatment by Thai security forces that led to the deaths of other refugees.

Citing unnamed sources, the UNHCR said 80 Rohingya boat people are being held on Koh Sai Daeng island off the Thai coast in the Andaman Sea.

Another 46 refugees were intercepted on a boat last Friday and handed over to the Thai military, but it was not known where they are now, the agency said in a statement.

The UNHCR said it wanted to assess their situation and determine whether they needed international protection.

"This follows our expression of strong concern to the government last week over allegations that large groups of Rohingya boat people from Myanmar were intercepted in Thai waters, towed out to sea and left to die," the UNHCR said.

There was no immediate response from Bangkok.

Rights groups citing interviews with survivors say hundreds of Rohingya, a Muslim minority fleeing oppression and economic hardship in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, were detained by the Thai military last month and forced back to sea with little food or water.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has promised a full investigation, but on Tuesday he issued a blanket denial on behalf of the armed forces.

"Let's be clear that Thailand has not violated the human rights of the refugees. The military has maintained that it has not breached any humanitarian principles on this issue," Abhisit told reporters.

The government has pointed the finger at human trafficking networks and called on regional neighbours to help deal with the rising number of illegal migrants.

Security agencies said the number of Rohingya intercepted in Thai waters each year has risen steadily to 4,886 in 2008 from 2,793 in 2007 and 1,225 in 2006.

"Some of the refugees have resorted to deliberate sabotage by sinking their vessels, forcing them to swim to our shores and seek our assistance," Abhisit said.

The UNHCR said there are 28,000 Rohingya refugees living in two U.N. camps in Bangladesh and some 200,000 living outside the camps there.

Many have sailed from Bangladesh and Myanmar in small boats in recent years and turned up in Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia. (Reporting by Pracha Hariraksapitak; Writing by Vithoon Amorn, Editing by Darren Schuettler and Sugita Katyal)

Unequal struggle

The war on Myanmar's border

Less for freedom than survival

ONE of Asia’s longest-running wars gets no less vicious as it gets older. For six decades the Karen National Union (KNU) has resisted the government in Yangon—inaptly known, these days, as the State Peace and Development Council or SPDC, a brutal junta. The biggest of Myanmar’s myriad insurgent groups not to have reached a truce with the SPDC, the KNU’s armed wing is now fighting desperately for survival in the mountainous Thai border region around the town of Umphang.

This month SPDC soldiers razed the base camp of one of its seven brigades: a newish settlement equipped with solar power, piped water, fish-holding tanks and medical facilities. Soldiers are now sleeping rough in dense jungle. Several hundred civilians, their homes in ashes, huddle under makeshift shelters.

Fighting alongside the SPDC are soldiers ostensibly belonging to a rival Karen militia, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)—a loose coalition of KNU defectors, drug-runners and freelance thugs. The armies often mount attacks from Thai soil. That side of the border is more navigable, and is not strewn with landmines. The KNU’s David Thackrabaw accuses the SPDC of pursuing a scorched-earth policy against both fighters and the civilian population. Another KNU commander, Nerdah Mya, his base in cinders, says his army has no “location” any more and is “always on the move”. But he denies the war is in a critical stage. The KNU has been coping with such hardships for years.

Umphang was once home to one of Thailand’s finest teak forests, logged by the KNU, in the days when Thailand tolerated it as a useful buffer to Myanmar. The region is also rich in antimony, gold, zinc and tin. The latest phase of the war began last June, with a concerted battle for control of the area. At times the Thai army has resorted to lobbing mortars at SPDC battalions, whose stray shells have forced the evacuation of Thai villages. Local farmers are “taxed” by both sides to get their produce to market.

Of some 140,000 refugees from Myanmar in camps in Thailand, more than 60% come from Karen state. They may be the lucky ones. Reports from western Karen state say that villages and crops there are often torched. The DKBA is much loathed, and many of its soldiers might join the KNU if it had any scent of victory. But at the moment, it has none.

The Economist NEWS

Myanmar top astrologer predicts Obama re-election

AFP News

YANGON (AFP) — A top astrologer in Myanmar Monday predicted ahead of Barack Obama's inauguration that the US president-elect would win another term in office and that he would escape attempts to harm him.

"Obama will be definitely re-elected again. Leos are born to lead others. His card shows the emperor sign," San-Zarni Bo, 53, who gives daily predictions on a Myanmar FM radio station, told AFP.

He said Obama's birthday on August 4 means "the country will be developed under the leadership of number-four born Obama."

But he warned that, according to his reading of the stars, there would be "certain assassination attempts" in 2009, 2010 and 2013 but that they would fail because of his birth date and horoscope.

"I can basically say all attempts will fail and be unsuccessful. But how can we say definitely without reading his palm?", he said.

He also warned of potential threats to incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton. "According to astrology, the arrow is pointing to Madam Clinton," he said.

Numerology plays an important role in the daily life of this devoutly Buddhist country, where people turn to astrologers to determine the most auspicious times for weddings, travelling or making business deals.

Asked if Obama would help the people of military-ruled Myanmar -- against whose junta Washington has imposed sanctions -- San-Zarni Bo said people born on the fourth day of the month "stand on the side of the weak people."

What human trafficking?

New Straits Time

PUTRAJAYA: Kuala Lumpur has refuted US allegations that officials here are involved in human trafficking activities.

Saying that the accusations were baseless, ridiculous and far-fetched, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said it was typical of the United States to practise “high-handedness” by accusing other countries of “committing various crimes”.

“We are a civilised country. We are not living in barbaric times when people are sold off at the whims and fancies of people with power.

“It is certainly unfair of the US Senate to accuse us of doing outrageous things,” he told The Star yesterday.

AFP reported recently that the US Senate is investigating allegations that officials in Malaysia were extorting money from foreign migrants and were linked to human trafficking.

The migrants, mostly from Myanmar, were allegedly taken by government officials to the border between Malaysia and Thailand where they were extorted or sold to human trafficking syndicates.

The report also claimed that the foreigners were taken from government-run detention centres to the border where money was demanded from them. They were turned over to human traffickers in southern Thailand if they could not pay up.

According to US officials, the Senate foreign relations committee staff have travelled to Malaysia, Thailand and to the border to collect information as part of investigations.

Dr Rais said Wisma Putra had not been informed of any visit by the committee, adding that such visits would require government-to-government arrangements and approval.

“One cannot simply go to another country and start investigating. We are a sovereign country,” he said.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar also denied claims that thousands of illegal foreigners held at detention centres were “being sold off” to human trafficking syndicates.

“I take offence with the allegation because neither the Malaysian Government nor its officials make money by selling people.

“We detain them because they are illegals who must be sent home, We take care of their needs. We don’t hold them at depots and sell them away,” he said.

Syed Hamid said if the US Senate was concerned about the welfare of humans and wanted to act as the “policeman of the world”, it should immediately stop the genocide by Israel against Palestinians.

Malaysia fast-tracks deportation

'We have got more than one million people who are illegals in this country so I don't think our prisons are big enough,' Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar told a press conference. -- ST PHOTO: ABDUL HAZIZ HUSSIN _________________________________________________________________

KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIA said on Friday it is fast-tracking the deportation of illegal migrants under a pilot project that will see offenders handed a fine and a one-way ticket home - bypassing court and jail.

'We have got more than one million people who are illegals in this country so I don't think our prisons are big enough,' Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar told a press conference. 'So if people have overstayed slightly, we will try to sort it out.'

Under the present system, illegal migrants are arrested, charged in court and face a variable fine or jail sentence.

But under the scheme, launched at Kuala Lumpur's main airport, offenders will have their biometric details recorded - including fingerprints and facial recognition data - before being served with a small fine.

The cost of their flight home will be covered by employers' bonds which are paid when hiring a foreigner.

'We are just beginning the test project... Once this system is established and we are confident that it works, then we are going to install it at all our entry and exit points,' said senior home ministry official Raja Azahar.

Migrant rights group Tenaganita criticised the new approach, which will give visa overstayers no right to appeal in court or to be represented by a lawyer.

'We are concerned by the new policy because a lot of foreign workers end up being illegal because employers fail to renew their work permit and bond,' said the group's coordinator Ms Aegile Fernandez.

'They end up being illegal not due to any fault of their own and these individuals should not then face expulsion,' she said.

Mr Syed Hamid urged employers not to rely on foreign workers. The nation of 27 million people has an estimated 2.2 million foreign labourers who are the mainstay of the plantation and manufacturing sectors.

'When the economy is facing a global crisis, we must give priority to our people,' he said. -- AFP

Child with brain outside skull needs financial assistance for surgery

by The The

New Delhi ( Mizzima ) – In a rare case, a child with his brain outside the skull, badly needs financial assistance as surgical expenses, his parents, a Burmese refugee couple from Malaysia said.

The baby boy, who was abnormally born has his brain in a small pouch like cyst in the back of his skull, and frequently suffers from convulsion and seizure.

The seven-month- old baby has to be taken to clinic at least twice a month, his parents said.

"We are now on the way to the clinic. He has high fever and is now almost unconscious. He was seriously sick last month also. The doctor gave him lumbar suction treatment," his mother, an ethnic Chin, Man Sien Cin said.

She said, she wants a surgery on the baby as the doctor said the boy, without an operation, would at the most survive a year.

"But we have no money," she said.

The medical expenses provided by 'United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee' (UNHCR) cannot cover all the expenses and his father has to do odd jobs to meet expenses.

But his father cannot work at distant places as his baby, Hau Khan Khai, is frequently sick. He has to do menial jobs and odd jobs available at nearby places.

The boy was born in Klang hospital in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur city in July and he is their first child.

"The doctor said that his brain is outside the skull and there are flesh and pus instead in the skull. If he is shaken when he is held, he cries loudly in severe pain," his mother said.

There is a soft cyst on the top of his skull and his right leg and right fingers are a little deformed.

Man Sien Cin said, just after giving birth to her son, she was given lactation suppressant by the doctor and she could not breastfeed her son. The son has been fed with baby cereal food besides milk powder since he was four months old.

The family of Man Sien Cin hailing from Sielthawzang village, Tonzang Township of Chin State, reached Malaysia in 2007 and was recognized as refugees by UNHCR in early 2007.

To contact :Ms. Man Sien Cin

Cell : 006 + 016 + 9729 610

Thai military accused of 'killing' refugees

By Andrew Buncombe in Bangkok THE INDEPENDENT News

The Thai military has been accused of seizing hundreds of refugees, towing them out to sea and “leaving them to die” without engines and barely any food or water.

Aid groups said that hundreds of water-borne refugees from the Burma-Bangladesh border were arrested and held on an island in the Andaman Sea before being forced out into the ocean.

Around 500 are now being treated for severe dehydration after being rescued by the Indian coast guard. Survivors have said that scores of other refugees are still unaccounted for

“The Thai government is taking highly vulnerable people and risking their lives for political gain,” said Sean Garcia, a lawyer with the group Refugees International.

“It should be engaging the Burmese government on improving conditions at home?if it wants to stem these flows.”

The refugees that were allegedly abandoned belong to the Rohingya group, a stateless Muslim minority that live on the border between Burma and Bangladesh, in particular in the west of Burma in Rakhine state.

The Rohingya have long been persecuted by the Burmese authorities, which have banned them from either marrying or travelling without permission and from owning property. They are even denied citizenship.

As a result, large number of the group have regularly sought to escape to neighbouring Bangladesh. In 1978, around 200,000 of the group fled there after a particularly brutal crackdown against them, known as the Dragon King operation. In 1992 a similar number fled to the Cox’s Bazaar area of Bangladesh, though many were subsequently forced to return to Burma.

Experts say that with the refugees camps in Bangladesh long having stopped taking people, the Rohingya are now seeking to travel to Thailand and then make their way overland to Malaysia, a Muslim majority nation. They are also seeking to reach other countries in the region, including Indonesia.

The latest flood of refugees began in December. At the end of the year, several hundreds refugees were feared drowned after they jumped into the sea after their boat broke down. Indian coastguard officials found some bodies washed ashore.

Campaigners say this week’s seizure of hundreds of refugees marks a new policy by the Thai authorities, who have now tasked the military rather than the immigration service with countering the flood of Rohingya.

“We have heard from survivors that their boats were towed out to sea and then they were abandoned with two drums of water and four bags of rice - basically left to die,” said Chris Lewa, a Bangkok-based campaigner who runs the Arakan Project group.

“It is very brutal and that is why the Thai government needs to stop it now and find an alternative solution.”

With the refugees fleeing towards more and more countries, the issue is to be discussed at next month’s ASEAN summit in Thailand. But campaigners say that only once Burma recognises the Rohingya as citizens and stops discriminating against them, will they stop seeking to leave.

“The Rohingya have taken to the sea because they are desperate,” said Mr Garcia, of Refugees International. “They have no hope for a better life in Burma. Pushing them back out to sea is not an effective deterrent.”

Official figures claimed that 1,225 refugees arrived in Thailand in 2005-2006. They were 2,763 in 2006-2007 and 4,886 in 2007-2008. From 26 November to 25 December last year, 659 Rohingya were seized in eight separate incidents.

While official sources in Thailand have confirmed to the BBC that the refugees were forced back out to sea, the immigration service deny such a policy.

“Thai immigration office will never send illegal immigrants back to their countries by putting them back in the boat then let them go,” Police Lieutenant General Chatchawal Suksomjit, a commander of the Thailand Immigration Office, told reporters.

US Senate Committee To Release Reports Of Myanmar Migrants

By Salmy Hashim

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Bernama) -- The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee is working on two reports containing details of allegations by Myanmar migrants of extortions and threats of being turned over to human traffickers in southern Thailand, if ransom demands were not met.

A Committee staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Bernama here Thursday, that while the first report contained detailed allegations about the extortions and threats by Malaysian officials, the second report contained specific allegations by victims on who were paid and the recipients' bank account numbers.

Information from the second report would be conveyed to the United States law enforcement officials at the Treasury department and the Justice department who would determine what information would be shared with law enforcement officials in Southeast Asia, he added.

He said the timetable for release of the two reports had not been finalised.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in commenting on a foreign wire service report, wants the United States to pass on information pertaining to allegations that Malaysian officials extorted money from migrants in the country.

Stating that the government did not tolerate such practice, he said so far, the authorities had not received any report on the matter.

"If the US authority has it, we would be very thankful if they can pass the information to us, so that we can investigate and take appropriate action," he told reporters in Kuala Terengganu yesterday.

The Committee staffer told Bernama here that staffers had met with senior officials in Malaysia in August 2008 to make the Malaysian government aware of the allegations so that they could look into the matter.

The staffers also met with senior officials in southern Thailand (Sungai Golok). Last month, they went to Bangkok to meet with anti-trafficking police.

The staffer said the committee had received several signed statements by individuals (former Myanmar migrants) who typically alleged that once they reached Malaysian soil, they were arrested by Rela (People's Volunteer Corps) and then placed in government detention facilities.

They were then removed from these facilities and transported to the Malaysia-Thai border where they were later approached by agents of traffickers who demanded that they pay money to an established system, before they were allowed to return to Malaysia.

If these migrants refused to pay, they would often be turned over to human traffickers in southern Thailand.

"It's this same pattern of allegations that the committee received over the past year that caused us to investigate the matter," the staffer said.

There are more than 5,000 Myanmar refugees settled in Indiana where they had been giving first-person accounts of what had happened to them. About 40,000 Myanmar migrants have resettled in the United States since 1995.

-- BERNAMA

Burmese refugees struggle to resettle in Canada

QUEBEC — Rahima Begum holds a crumpled sheet in her hands that seems to have been folded and looked at dozens of times.

She tells the translator it is a precious item. It’s a pale photocopy of headshots of members of her family, including her mom, her dad, her sister and her children. There are 14 photos on the page. They are the ones she left behind at a refugee camp in Bangladesh when she came to Quebec City a few weeks ago with her two children.

“I miss them a lot,” 21-year-old Rahima says through a translator.

She is part of a group of 54 refugees from Burma — including 36 children and 14 women — who have landed recently in Quebec thanks to a federal refugee program. They are among the first group of some 5,000 Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic minority from western Burma’s Arakan state, who will be coming to Canada in the next few years.

Rohingya refugees have been living in United Nations camps in the southern tip of Bangladesh for 17 years.

Originally from Burma (also known as Myanmar), they fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s.

In 1991 over 260,000 Rohingya people settled in camps in Bangladesh. Some 27,000 of them are still living there today.

Rahima has lived in those camps since she was seven years old. “It was difficult,” she says. “We were isolated and it was controlled. We couldn’t go in and out as we wanted.”

Tamira and Senoyra Begum — the three women share the same last name but they are not related — also spent most of their life in the camps. They got married and divorced there too.

“The time spent with my husband was the worst,” Tamira, 25, tells the translator Ashraful in a mix of Bengali and Rohingyalish language.

She explains that her husband beat her but she stops short of giving details. “It’s a long story. It will hurt and I will cry if I tell it,” she says.

But Tamira and Senoyra are grateful to be in Canada now, far away from the dangerous conditions of the camps and their former husbands.

“I hope my husband could read your story,” Tamira says with a big smile. Senoyra nods her head in agreement. “It’s great here. I’m very happy,” she says. “The children sleep like babies,” she adds.

But their smile quickly fades away when they talk about the rest of their family. Rahima, Tamira and Senoyra came to Canada with their children, but they left their other loved ones behind. Now that they are safe in their new adopted country and learning to cope with the winter — “Snow good,” Rahima manages to say in English — all they think about is bringing them to Canada.

When Immigration and Citizenship minister Jason Kenney paid a courtesy visit to the Burmese refugees in Quebec City recently he was assailed with questions. “Can the rest of my family come here?” “What do I have to do?”

The translator was relaying their concerns to the minister who refused to make any public commitment. “We have a reunification program and you will be in a good position to help your family if you settle here and integrate well into your new country,” Kenney told them. He stressed that learning one or both official languages and finding a job will be crucial to help them eventually sponsor their family to come to Canada.

But Ferid Chikhi, who heads the Quebec multi-ethnic centre that took charge of the Rohingyas, says it is hard for them to resettle and start a new life here without their family.

“A new world is opening up to them, but they are uprooted from their relatives. They are deeply preoccupied about those left behind in difficult conditions,” he says. “In the refugee camps they had nothing, but at least they were together,” he adds.

It could take years to help bring their families here because reunification programs are complicated and costly, said Dominique Lachance, assistant director at the multi-ethnic centre.

“I wish that they would have moved entire families to Canada instead of hand-picking the ones who could come,” she says.

The most vulnerable, women and children, have been selected via refugee programs. Lachance told minister Kenney herself when he visited the centre that the Rohingyas could use some help from the government to facilitate the reunifications, such as special programs that were put in place to help groups of refugees from Bosnia in the 1990s.

Canada became the first country to resettle Rohingya refugees. In 2006 and 2007, approximately 100 were selected and they have resettled in Ontario.

In 2008, Canada has accepted approximately 55 more Rohingya refugees, who came to Quebec, and another group of 145 will be coming here in the next year.

Rahima, Tamira and Senoyra can only hope that their families will soon join them. Meanwhile, they are helping and supporting each other.

“I’m not worried for them,” Lachance says. “They are survivors.”

Happy New Year 2009

Kuala Lumpur: As thousands of revellers who ushered in the New Year 2009 while the vast blue sky is lightening up by fireworks in Kuala Lumpur, hundreds of Chin refugees in Malaysia were gathering near the Chin Refugee Centre in Jalan Imbi, Kuala Lumpur while some women and elder people entered into the Chin Christian Felliowship church and prayed for New Year 2009.

The sea of revellers dousing each other with party foam as soon as the midnight clock strike at 00:00 in Kuala Lumpur. Some Chin small restauranht owners at Jalan Imbi freely donated condensed sticky rice bundled with banana leaf to hundreds of Chin refugees gathering around Jalan imbi. " I felt at home to myself as soon as I opened a banana leaf and smelt a well cooked and condensed sticky rice or Changkar" said Pu Thla Chum.

Traditionally, Chin people celebrates every New Year with Christian Prayer at midnight in Chin state, Myanmar. There are appoximately 30000 Chin refugees and asylum-seekers in Malaysia who miss home especially in New Year time. However, the tradition of praying together is still going on among the Chin people wherever they are. Chin people pray for hundreds of the Chin refugees who are imprisoned in several immigration detention camps as illegal immigrants in Malaysia.

They pray that the brutal regime dictatorial rule be ended in Myanmar so that the Lord our God shepard us back home soon.

The Chin people wished their 2009 New Year blessings to all NGOs, UNHCR and all their friends around the world. They also pray for Malaysia to be a prosperous nation and their compassion and humanitarian assistance for all refugees in Malaysia be rewarded by God with abundant wealth, happiness, good health and peace in the future.

May Happy New Year 2009 bless you with good health and fruitful success !