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Rohingya woes brought to multilateral forums: FM
The government will involve Myanmar, Bangladesh and destination countries in determining the future of hundreds of Rohingya refugees in Aceh province, a number of whom have sought to return, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Friday
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The government will involve Myanmar, Bangladesh and destination countries in determining the future of hundreds of Rohingya refugees in Aceh province, a number of whom have sought to return, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Friday.
Hassan told reporters that the government would discuss the issue at multilateral forums, including the ASEAN Summit in February in Thailand, the regional ministerial forum of the Bali Process in the middle of this year, and UN forums.
Recently, Rohingya refugees have posed a quandary for many countries, mainly because of their persecution by Myanmar’s military junta.
A Foreign Ministry team has clarified the status of the first group of 193 Rohingya refugees who arrived in January in Sabang, but Hassan refused to disclose how many of them would leave Indonesia voluntarily. Of the 193, 56 are from Bangladesh and 136 from Myanmar, while the status of one has yet to be disclosed.
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar. The military regime does not recognize them as part of any of the country’s around 130 minorities.
Hassan said the forums would discuss voluntary repatriation procedures, amid concerns over safety and the future of the remainder who insist on departing to their final destinations after “transiting” in the northwest tip of Sumatra.
“We will screen those claiming having political reasons to seek asylum and this will take some time.”
The Foreign Ministry team found out that those refugees had earlier arrived in Thailand, but were towed back out to sea and had their boat engines ripped out by the authorities there.
Hassan pointed out that the Southeast Asia region had just ratified the ASEAN Charter, in which the 10 member states were committed to enforcing human rights and had pledged not to overburden neighboring states by failures to act accordingly.
“Originating countries must stop persecutions and the flow of refugees, and they should stop getting bad treatment in the form of throwing them back out to sea,” he said.
