The reactions and responsibilities to Rohingya refugees
Mahidol university international college
Anantadetch Thanaviparat 5780915
November 27, 2015

The reactions and responsibilities to Rohingya refugees when a group of people who are a minority, stateless, treated unequally, discriminated against, excluded and persecuted are in need of help, which countries have to take a responsibility for them? The Rohingya are an example of such kinds of groups and several issues have arised to who should help them. To clarify, the Rohingya are a group of an ethnic religion people from a border state between Myanmar and Bangladesh called Rakhine region.
With an approximate population of 1.5 million people, consist of three townships ­
Buthidaung, Maungdaw and Rathedaung (Petcharamesree & Chickera, 2015b ). Moreover,
Gutman （1976） stated that these people have cultural, historical and linguistic affiliations with Rakhine state’s population, also with the Chittagonian people who are the ones in the borders in Bangladesh. For this reason, Rohingyas are Muslim as opposed to the majority in
Myanmar who are Buddhists. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled the major­buddhist country Myanmar in the interest of searching for security safety and prosperity conditions in several countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
However, these countries are not really welcoming them due to the enormous domestic problems that they have already faced. While some people have a perspective that the
Rohingya issue is Myanmar’s responsibility, in contrast, some people have different viewpoints. From my point of view, The Rohingya immigrants should be given refuge by
ASEAN countries in particular Malaysia because of the various Human Rights clauses, development benefits to the helping nation and positive promotion of the nation. First of all, countries like Malaysia are obligated to offer protection to these kinds of groups as they are bound by several Human Rights treaties. The ASEAN countries should take part in the issue especially Malaysia because of some appropriate conditions provided by them as

Dr Sriprapha Petcharamesree and Amal de Chickera （2015a） stated, the multi­country project research team stated “the country has a long history of providing temporary asylum to groups of refugees and asylum seekers”. Furthermore, Malaysia is obligated under international laws, according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1981, p. 2), the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1981, p. 9), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2009, article. 15), and as the refugees are under the conditions of those 3 core international human rights treaties above, it is the nation’s responsibilities to take part in issue. According to “Accounts from Rohingya”
(2015), the refugees were suffering on the small boat at sea for 2 months packed below decks in cramped conditions also with limited water, food and brutally poor sanitation along the
Thailand’s coast. Additionally, “According to Klang MP Charles Santiago, as a member of the United Nations Security Council, Malaysia is obligated to uphold the
Responsibility to
Protect (2015), it means that Malaysia has to help the group of people who are suffering
”
from neighborhood country. Secondly, immigrants can provide various benefits in terms of labor and help in the development of the nation. Malaysia is one of the countries which should take part to this issue. To start with, according to

Raphael Wong, recently, Malaysia lacks foreign

work forces, manufacturing and agriculture sector, particularly in the construction that cannot function without the foreign labors (2014). Therefore, by taking in the Rohingya group, this problem can be fixed (2014). Furthermore, according to Richard Kuehn (2015), this can
Paul
work similarly to the Chinese migrants who were settled themselves in Thailand for several centuries and now more than half of the businesses in Thailand are run by Chinese­Thai people. As a result, Thailand obtains a large number of benefits from these people in terms of

economic benefits. So there is a possibility that Rohingya refugees will be beneficial to both
Malaysia and the immigrants themselves. Finally, apart from the economic issue that refugees might benefit to the nation for several reasons, one is the education system issue in Malaysia, in this case the government can handle the problem with the Rohingya refugees. From my perspective, education is one of the most important factors for people to survive in the present day. According to Melissa Chi, about 6000 graduated teachers in Malaysia have unemployed; therefore, the education minister has to resolve this issue as soon as possible, perhaps it might once again show the education minister's failure to deal with proper planning and waste of nation’s resource
(2013). Besides, it can bring positive light to the helping nation. Malaysia did not have really positive views from the public spotlight as a result of recently Malaysia got many bad news which destroyed the country’s reliability such as the lost of MH­370 and the sodomy issue.
By helping the Rohingya group, Malaysia will look good and may also be provided with funds from various organizations. We cannot ignore the fact that, there are plenty of negative effects from accepting these refugees as well. Firstly, the origin of Rohingya settled at Arakan state in Myanmar since the
1400s, thus, numerous people have a perspective that the origin nation should mainly take part to the issue (Smith, 2015). David Han Guo Xiong (2015), a Research Analyst with the
Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore stated that the Rohingya issue is largely caused by a domestic problem in Myanmar as majority Buddhists Burmese are persecuting those minority
Rohingya. According to Alan Strathern, mosques and more than 70 homes in Oakkan, north

of Rangoon, Myanmar were attacked and burned by Buddhist mobs, after a Muslim girl collided with a Buddhist monk (2013). As a result. many Muslim people were injured and one person died from the incident. Therefore, it is Myanmar’s duty to take only part of this issue. According to Elizabeth Wilmshurst (2007) , there are several laws that state that other nations cannot interfere in domestic affair. To illustrate, it is similar to Thailand’s conflict in
2006 between red shirt and yellow shirt, a huge number of people got injured from this conflict, United States officials urged the Thai government should solve the conflict peacefully and accordance to Law (Jinks & Malespine, 2006). From this law, it is Myanmar’s responsibility that Rohingya group should not be sent to other nations in order to be solved. In addition, when immigrant occurs there are numerous cases of human trafficking. To illustrate, according to new media (2015), the Rohingya immigrants who would like to go to the third country such as Malaysia or Indonesia have to pay a large amount of money which is approximately 80,000 baht per each person, while the ones who cannot afford this fee, they will be sent to work as a fisherman or rubber plantation with an approximate fee is around 10,000 to 20,000 baht for each person. However, this is a huge number for these refugees compared to the condition that they are facing with such as limited access to education, employment and freedom to travel. Those who cannot pay often end up in places they don’t want to be having to do difficult jobs. Apart from trafficking , Meeboonlue,
Peebua (2013, p. 13­14) showed that the Rohingya refugees might join the Muslim extremists in Bangladesh in order to fight with Myanmar’s government, they are trained professionally on use of weapon. The fact is that the Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) is the Muslim extremists who are supported by several Muslim extremist groups such as Jamaat­E­Islam in
Bangladesh and Pakistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hiz­F­Islam in Afghanistan,

Hizb­UL­Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir cities and finally Angkatan Belia sa­Malaysia
(ABIM) in Malaysia. As in 2002, Elliot Brennan & Christopher O'Hara (2015) said that “Its purpose is probably to draw a connection between Al Qaeda, which has supported Arakan
Rohingya national organisation, and Burmese insurgent groups active on the Thai border”.Correspondingly, besides joining Muslim extremists, groups of the Rohingya are doing plenty of illegal businesses which are dealing with drugs, weapon trade, trafficking agency and counterfeit documents. take for instance, women from Rakhine state who are satisfied as safe passage were dealing with drugs by carrying drugs into many countries
( reported.ly
Team
, 2015). Thus, the groups of the Rohingya might be a significant cause of illegal businesses which they will powerfully cause negative effects on the taking nation. To sum up, as the minority Muslim Rohingya are fleeing to the third countries such as
Malaysia Indonesia and Thailand from the majority Buddhist Myanmar, as a result of they are being treated harshly and persecuted. It is the responsibility of Islamic ASEAN countries especially Malaysia to give a hand to the Rohingya immigrants who are stateless, treated unequally and discriminated against in terms of refugees acceptance whereby it has to offer refuge to these people, Malaysia has registered under the international laws which the nations have to put duty on the issue such as the given three cores of the human rights declaration.
Additionally, by accepting these immigrants it will benefit both Malaysia and the refugees themselves. Thirdly, it will bring a positive outlook on the nation. Therefore, as an ASEAN countries member, the related country which is wealthy and share similar cultures such as
Malaysia should give hand to those refugees such as the Rohingya even though, there might be some complications.
References

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