Indonesia has told Australia that most of the 7000 boatpeople stranded at sea in the region are not Rohingya asylum-seekers but illegal labourers from Bangladesh.
In a foreign ministers’ meeting in Seoul yesterday, Indonesian officials told Foreign Minister Julie Bishop that only 30 per cent to 40 per cent of those stranded on boats and in camps in the region were Rohingya refugees.
“They (Indonesia) believe there are about 7000 people at sea (and) they think about 30-40 per cent are Rohingya, the rest are Bangladeshi; and they are not, in Indonesia’s words, asylum-seekers, they are not refugees, they are illegal labourers, they’ve been promised or are seeking jobs in Malaysia,” Ms Bishop told The Weekend Australian.
South-East Asia migrant crisis: Julie Bishop told by Indonesia most of 7,000 people stranded are illegal labourers, not refugees
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-23/b ... rs/6491836
“They said the Rohingya have gone to Bangladesh and have mixed up with the Bangladeshis who are coming to Malaysia in particular for jobs.”
She said the Indonesian representative at the so-called MIKTA meeting in Seoul, Hasan Kleib, Indonesia’s Director-General of Multilateral Affairs, said one boatload of 600 people was found to have 400 Bangladeshis aboard.
Ms Bishop, who called this week for the international community to ratchet up pressure on Myanmar, described Indonesia’s comments as “very pointed ... they said that’s what their intelligence had informed them”.
With world attention now turning to Myanmar’s role in the regional migration crisis, its navy carried out its first rescue of an asylum-seeker boat, bringing 208 people to shore.
“A navy ship found two boats … on May 21 while on patrol,” said Tin Maung Swe, a senior official in the western state of Rakhine, adding “about 200 Bengalis were on one of the boats”.
The revelation that many of those seeking refuge are economic migrants came as Tony Abbott maintained his refusal to resettle any stranded Rohingyas in Australia. “I will say or do nothing to encourage people to take to the sea in boats and any suggestion that there is some kind of special resettlement program here in Australia for people taking to the sea in boats just encourages people-smuggling,’’ the Prime Minister said.
“So it would be utterly irresponsible of me or anyone to suggest for a second that we will reward people for doing something so dangerous.’’
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton also hit back at criticism that Australia was not doing enough to help the thousands stranded at sea, many for more than 40 days with scarce supplies of food and water.
Australia provided, by way of donor support, the largest amount of money to the International Organisation for Migration and the UN refugee agency in Indonesia, Mr Dutton said.
“We cannot be in a situation, having the most generous humanitarian program in the world, to then say, or to pretend cruelly to people, that we can somehow take millions of people from regions around the world, who would be displaced. We just can’t do that,” he said.
Australia has contributed $170 million to the IOM since 2000, including $40m this year, Ms Bishop said.
More than 3000 asylum-seekers caught up in the unfolding human drama have already landed in Indonesia and Malaysia, and at least 100 in Thailand.
Only Rohingyas are being given a one-year temporary shelter, while Bangladeshis face repatriation.
For decades, Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya have suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in majority Buddhist Myanmar.
Denied citizenship by national law, they are effectively stateless. Indonesia hopes its claims about the majority of the boatpeople being economic migrants rather than genuine asylum-seekers will reduce criticism of its turning back of boats and its handling of the humanitarian crisis.
Ms Bishop said regional pressure on Myanmar as a source country of the boatpeople had intensified and she welcomed a decision by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to hold a special meeting on the issue, which ASEAN member Myanmar will attend. She also welcomed the decision by the Malaysian and Indonesian foreign ministers to travel to Myanmar to ask that government to do more to prevent the outflow of Rohingya refugees.
Both Indonesia and Australia used the MIKTA meeting, a five-country middle-power grouping that includes South Korea, Turkey and Mexico, to discuss the refugee crisis in the region and in the Middle East.
Despite Indonesia’s earlier criticism of Mr Abbott’s refusal to consider taking Rohingya refugees, Ms Bishop said Indonesia did not criticise Australia’s stand at the meeting yesterday.
“No one raised any questions about the Prime Minister’s comments,’’ Ms Bishop said referring to Mr Abbott’s “Nope, nope, nope” response to whether he would consider allowing Rohingya boatpeople into Australia.
The Reuters news agency reported that state media in Yangon had quoted Myanmar’s military commander-in-chief. Min Aung Hlaing. as saying some “boatpeople’’ were probably pretending to be Rohingya to receive aid.
