Rohingya, The Hidden Genocide Al Jazeera Investigates
Unwanted people?
The Rohingya Muslims, citizens of Myanmar have been written off as stateless people by their own government. Chased out of their home region Rakhine State in Myanmar (Burma), the Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia searching for any safe refuge. The Bangladeshi government has denied Rohingyas any opportunity to stay long term in Bangladesh. Malaysia has only allowed a few Rohingya families, many women and children to stay in the Malay archipelago. As the massacres and ethnic cleansing has continued into a low intensity tit for tat by Rohingya's own neighbors in Rakhine egged on by xenophobic Buddhist monks. The Myanmarese government has remind numb and deaf to the cruel treatment of their own citizens. Every few months, Rohingyas are pushed out of their temporary places of refuge from refugee camps or safe areas along borders of Bangladesh and Myanmar or Myanmar-Thailand.
Tired Rohingya people turned away in Bangladesh.
Stranded at sea
Other fed up Rohingya have crowded boats sailing from Bangladesh to Indonesia's Aceh and the Malucca Straits searching and appealing to Indonesian and Malaysian governments to put aside their politics and let them stay in their respective countries. Having turned their back on the desperate refugees and neighbors, the Indonesian and Malaysian governments have excused the Rohingyas' pleas for refugee protection as manipulation by human traffickers. With pressure from the UN, the Indonesian government has slowly begun rescuing stranded Rohingya at sea. Many Rohingyas left discrimination and religious persecution in Myanmar, have relied on human traffickers to crisscross borders and travel by sea for safety. Many innocent women, children and men stranded on the sea ways between Bangladesh, Indonesian-Malay archipelago have been starving and dehydrated for the past three days. The stranded Rohingyas are in the same boat as their African and Arab counterparts traveling by boat to the shores of Europe. No matter where the frustrated boat people may be on the Mediterranean or in the Malucca Straits, governments have proven that national security politics and treating migration as a hidden form of terrorism has blinded many governments and societies to compassion and solidarity for migrants, asylums and refugees.
Myanmar's place in Asia. Surrounded by the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, Myanmar has been isolated for most of its history to punish the now removed military Junta. Nevertheless, China has reached out to the most isolated countries in Southeast Asia, Myanmar included. China has been mute on the plight of the Rohingya and other refugee/migrant crisis occurring in the Southeast Asian region ie Afghan, Syrian and Indonesian refugees locked up in detention centers in Australia.
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