We need to do something to stop ‘floating graveyards -
A floating graveyard, is how one man described it to us. After leaving on a
boat from Sittwe, in Myanmar’s
Rakhine State,
he had spent 62 days at sea hoping to make it to Thailand
or Malaysia,
crouching shoulder to shoulder with 400 others.
They
were given no more than a single scoop of rice each day, and a small cup of
water. Anyone who asked for more rations, or tried to speak to other
passengers, was beaten with plastic rods. Two passengers died; one from
illness, another when he jumped overboard in desperation.
“We
lost hope we would reach shore alive,” the man told us.
We
have heard too many of these stories. In the last year, UNHCR’s team of
maritime movement monitors has interviewed more than 500 individuals who left
Myanmar or Bangladesh by sea, virtually all of whom had experienced the same
harrowing conditions on board and in smuggling camps in Thailand, where they
were held in open-air wooden cages until their relatives paid ransoms of up to
$2,000.
Hundreds
have arrived at our office in Kuala
Lumpur, malnourished to the point of paralysis. This
year alone, we believe as many as 300 people have died at sea from
malnutrition, illness, and beatings by crew members, to say nothing of the
scores of bodies buried deep in the jungle near the Thailand-Malaysia border.
Every
day, three more people who get on these boats will never get off.
Scale of problem laid bare
This
month, the discovery of graves containing those bodies, and the arrival of
thousands of individuals on beaches in Malaysia and Indonesia, have shed new
light on the human smuggling that runs rampant across the Bay of Bengal and
Andaman Sea, a brutal trade that has generated upwards of $100 million in
annual revenue for the smugglers.
In
any given week of the last three years, hundreds and sometimes thousands of
individuals from Myanmar and
Bangladesh
have been held just off the resort islands of Phuket and Langkawi at the mercy
of smugglers, who have tortured and often murdered their human cargo in this
sea of impunity. Many of the victims are refugees fleeing persecution.
This
is a worsening calamity that has long passed the point of being addressable by
any one country. It is a distinctly regional problem that requires a regional
solution, with help from the larger international community.
What needs to be done
The
most immediate need is for coastal authorities in Thailand, Malaysia, and
Indonesia to rescue the thousands who may be currently stranded at sea since
being abandoned by their smugglers, and safely disembark them to locations
where their protection needs can be determined and met.
Some
countries in this region have already offered to share guidelines for rescue
and disembarkation, so that a consistent approach can be implemented across the
region, thereby undermining smugglers’ attempts to leverage one country’s
procedures against another’s.
Beyond
the current emergency, there are concrete steps countries in this region can
take to cease the flow of refugees out of the Bay of
Bengal and at the same time ensure that those already in host
countries receive the sustained protection they need.
For
example, Bangladesh and Malaysia could offer legal stay and work options
to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya originally from Myanmar already
living and working in those countries.
Thailand
would make significant progress towards its stated goal of combating human
trafficking by prosecuting smuggling and trafficking ringleaders and offering
victims legal avenues to at least temporarily stay and work, all of which are
already provided for under Thai law. And to ease the burden of caring for those
with acute medical and protection needs, countries outside the region could
increase their resettlement intake of the most vulnerable individuals.
Root of the
problem
The
keystone that would hold each of these interlocking pieces together is the
situation in Rakhine State,
Myanmar.
If
inter-communal strife in Rakhine
State subsides, and all
its residents are given the security and freedom they need to pursue their livelihoods,
it would go a long way towards convincing other countries that any humanitarian
measures they adopt would not simply increase the maritime flow of refugees.
We
know from our work with countries in this region that they are willing, even
eager, to offer humanitarian assistance, but are understandably looking for
assurance that they will not have to do so indefinitely.
This
need not be an intractable problem. The solutions are out there; some are even
being explored already. But every day we delay cooperation, more lives —
possibly dozens more — are lost. Every day we fail to act is another day when a
mass grave will be unearthed, and another boatload of abused and malnourished
refugees will wash ashore, another floating graveyard.
Daisy Dell is the Director of the Bureau for Asia and the Pacific at
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Headquarters in
Geneva. The views expressed here are those of the author.
