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Teknaf, Bangladesh: Camp security police and local villagers have increased harassment against the refugees of Nayapara official camp since Ramadan month began on August 2, said a refugee committee member who declined to be named.

On the evening of August 5, camp security police accompanied by some local villagers harassed and looted the belongings of a group of refugees when they tried to enter the camp through rear gate. Refugees are not allowed to go out of the camp from the police gate, so they go out of the camp from rear gate without giving any information to the camp police.

On that day the police and local people looted bananas, sugar, chickpeas, edible oil, green chilies, onions, and more from the refugees who had bought the items from Teknaf market earlier. They looted from 30 refugees on that day. They also seized two mobile phones and money from the refugees.

The police entered the camp, destroyed the small shops of refugees and threw the goods away. Some goods were taken by the police who ordered the refugees to not sell any goods in the camp.

A refugee said that in Thailand, refugees are allowed to sell goods in the camp openly and there are no restrictions. “Even refugees are allowed to do business. Why are we not here? We are the same as other refugees.”

“During Ramadan month, everybody (Muslims) wants to have good food. Refugees are provided some goods in the camp, but it is not sufficient. So they want to buy some other necessary things from outside the camp. Without buying essential goods, they cannot survive.”

The same day, after sunset, a refugee named Mohamed Shoffee (40), on of Du Du Meah, B-Block, MRC No. 0917, Shed No.1024, of Nayapara camp, went to the health clinic of the camp to give food where his wife was admitted for treatment. At that time, a group of police led by one inspector went to his shed and carried away his bedstead, which was made of ordinary wood five months ago by Du Du Meah himself. He is a carpenter and had been taking training for carpentery in the camp that was provided by a government initiative, said a relative of the victim from the camp.

“This matter was appraised to the Camp-in-Charge (CIC) Saiful Islam Mujumdar and a UNHCR official, but the CIC admonished the victim, saying, ‘This is a refugee camp, and no one has a permit to sleep with a bedstead. You have no soil under your feet, why do you want to sleep on a bedstead?”

After that, the victim went to the camp security police to ask them to return his bedstead, but the police asked him to pay 2,000 Taka for his bedstead to be returned. So the victim abandoned it, as it would be worth only 1,000 Taka when sold in a market.

“Everyday, the camp police and local villagers disturb us when we want to go out and when we try to enter the camp after buying essentials from the market. The authorities concerned are requested to provide us facilities to buy things out of the camp during the holy month of Ramadan,” said a refugee elder from the camp.

Credit : Kaladan Press
As we heard, the recent Australia-Malaysia controversial agreement which would send back 800 unwanted boat people to Malaysia from Australia. In return, Australia will resettle 4,000 Burmese refugees hosting in Malaysia.

Following to official agreement, cases of those 800 persons would be processed in Malaysia. But no question for their plights once Australia reluctant to process them in its own territory. Despite UN human rights commissioner criticized the deal violates international laws and Malaysia has no mechanism to protect their rights and dignity, UNHCR and its partner IOM are ready to corporate to explore their projects .

According to the Australian immigration minister repeated speeches and the agreement clause 1(2), those intake 4,000 refugees are mandated Burmese refugees who have been determined to be genuine refugees by UNHCR and awaiting to resettle in third countries. The clause 7(2) stated that Australia will arrange to resettle this 4,000 persons over four years at a rate of approximately 1,000 person per year.
It indirectly means non-Rohingya refugees. Therefore stateless Rohingya Burmese refugees who are defined as the world most oppressed group and repressed again in host country, would be unfortunately excluded from this quota. Because they have not been issued mandated refugee identities despite Rohingyans are the earliest Burmese refugee group in Malaysia and the first refugees of Burma as well. 
Rohingya refugees would be continuously miginalized by their actor. Historically, there is no queue in resettlement processing so how the Australian prime minister could persuade it while no queue-line is organized in its own Australian detentions.  So, the thesis which refer those 800 unwanted boat people to be to line-up is a bit doubt and would shock for them.
Because of Rohingya refugees were not issued mandated refugee identities by UNHCR, what they received documents are registration identities and having difference from the other refugees. Please see the differences between Rohingyan and non-Rohingyan refugee IDs.
 
(1)As seen, the sophisticated word the ‘Bin’ instead of s/o(son of), was installed in only IDs of Rohingyas from later 2002 by suggestion that Rohingyas are living in Malay-Muslim society and that would easy them. In the rear, it is spontaneously branding them to be seen as a link relation to terror group after the consequences of 9/11 posts. While the ‘Bin’ word is never found in IDs of non-Rohingyas.   
UNHCR ID issued for Rohingya Refugees in Malaysia
(2)At the back of Rohingyan ID, stating in Malay language that the person is a Myanmar Muslim and living temporarily in Malaysia until a time when he can return to with its status as a safe country of origin.
But stating for non-Rohingyan is that the person is a refugee by the UNHCR mandate from Myanmar and waiting to resettle in a third country.



UNHCR ID issued for non-Rohingya refugees






















As you see in the picture, the first time Rohingya received UNHCR letters in 1992 had not used the ‘bin’ word. t is clear how UNHCR played doubled standard role.


UNHCR letter issued for Rohingya refugees in 1992
The refugee agency has able to pave international solution for those refugees who are recognized by Burmese government and enable to return home. While those unrecognized and unable to return home refugees are let to be languished in limbo. It is also revealed that oppressed Rohingya refugees are variously exploited again by concern quarters while they are subjected to human rights abuses in host country. On the fact of concern quarter’s such plots, it is the part that the host country doesn’t willing to recognize their plights . 
That was why the first memorandum submission by area based Rohingya refugee representatives on 3 Dec 2008, demanded to issue mandated refugee identity and to remove the word- ‘bin’ from their identities. Since then, based on their demands a few hundreds Rohingya refugees have been renewed mandated refugee card.
The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network


CHIBA--Language barriers and unfamiliar work in a much different environment are making life in Japan very stressful for ethnic Karen refugees from Myanmar who were transferred from a refugee camp in Thailand to Japan last autumn.
These refugees have been accepted on a third-country resettlement program sponsored by the central government on a test basis. Among them, a husband and wife undergoing work training at a farm in Yachimata, Chiba Prefecture, said they doubt coming to Japan was the right decision.
Providing the refugees with support from public and private sectors is expected to promote the program.
The couple was among five families of 27 Karen who lived in a refugee camp in Mera, northwestern Thailand, and the first batch of refugees who came to Japan on the program.
They took a six-month language training program and then moved to Yachimata, or Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, in March, which are their designated settlement places.
Two men and their wives who work at a farm in Yachimata had been absent from work for a month from July 2 and just returned to work Monday. One of the men, 37, had been a rice and corn farmer in Myanmar while the other man, 46, was a carpenter.
After living in the refugee camp for about a decade, they are now assigned to do farmwork from early morning to evening using a mechanical cultivator.
They complained that they could not bear the work conditions with only one day off each week. They agreed to return to work after the conditions were improved by increasing the number of days off from one to two each week and also reducing work hours.
The 37-year-old man's four children, who go to primary or middle schools, said they could not keep up with their classes. Although they are given extra tutoring after school, the children struggle.
His 29-year-old wife sometimes shouts at a mountain behind their house to get rid of the enormous mental stress caused by raising children while doing farmwork.
The farm's 68-year-old operator, who accepted the two families, criticized the central government for leaving these refugees who speak such poor Japanese at the farm.
The operator also stated that the six-month training program is too short to acquire agricultural know-how in machinery operation and developing marketing channels.
Providing support to these refugees is necessary to help them live independently. However, as the Foreign Ministry has not made information about the refugees public, citing safety, the private sector has yet to offer assistance to them.
Under the third-country settlement program, third countries accept refugees who would be persecuted in their home countries and cannot settle in countries they have fled to.
The government decided in December 2008 to introduce the program, believing that the process is smoother than that of accepting refugees based on the international convention on the status of refugees, under which Japan has accepted 577 refugees through last year.
As part of the test program, the government will accept about 30 refugees from the Mera camp each year until 2012.

Link:   :http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20110806-293052.html
မေလးရွားႏွင့္ၾသစေၾတးလ်ႏွစ္နိုင္ငံအာဏာပိုင္တို႕၏ ဒုကၡသည္ဖလွယ္ေရး အစီအစဥ္အရ ျမန္မာ နိုင္ငံသား (၄၀၀၀)ခန့္ကို ၾသစေၾတးလ်နိုင္ငံကေန ျပန္လည္လက္ခံဘြယ္ရာ ရွိသည္ဟု မေလးရွားနိုင္ငံ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာေကာ္မီတီတာ၀န္ရွိသူေတြက ေျပာပါသည္။

ႏွစ္နိုင္ငံဒုကၡသည္လဲလွယ္ေရးအစီအစဥ္အရ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ကိုျပန္ပို႕မည့္ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားထဲတြင္ ကခ်င္ ႏွင့္ခ်င္းလူမ်ိဳးအမ်ားအျပားပါ၀င္ေနသည္ဟု ခ်င္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာမဟာမိတ္ေကာ္မီတီတာ၀န္ရွိသူ တစ္ဦးမွ ယခုလိုေျပာပါသည္။

သူတို႕ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးျပီးျပီး။ အခုလုပ္မဲ့အလဲအလွယ္လုပ္မယ္ အစီအစဥ္ထဲမွာ အမ်ားအားျဖင့္ ေတာ့ကခ်င္နဲ႕ခ်င္းနဲ႕ဘဲပိုမ်ားမယ္။ က်န္တဲ့သူေတြကတစ္ေယာက္စႏွစ္ေယာက္စေတာ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ကို အရင္ကတည္းကစာရင္းတင္ထားတဲ့လူကိုဘဲသူတို႕ကေခၚမွာ။ အဲတာအခု(၅၀၀၀) ေက်ာ္ေတာင္ရွိတယ္။ စာရင္းေရာက္ျပီးသားလူ(၅၀၀၀)ေက်ာ္တယ္။ သူတို႕ကေန (၄၀၀၀)ဘဲေခၚမယ္ဆိုေတာ့ (၄၀၀၀)ေလာက္ဘဲသြားျဖစ္မယ္ထင္တယ္။

ဒုကၡသည္ဖလွယ္ေရး အစီအစဥ္အရ ၾသစေၾတးလ်မွာရွိေနသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးခုိလံႈခြင့္ေတာင္းခံသူ (၈ဝဝ) ကုိ မေလးရွားကိုပို႕မွာျဖစ္သလို မေလးရွားတြင္ရွိသည့္ ျမန္မာဒုကၡသည္အမ်ားစုပါဝင္သည့္ ဒုကၡသည္အစစ္ အမွန္မ်ားကုိ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ကေနျပန္လက္ခံရန္ ႏွစ္နိုင္ငံအစိုးရတို႕သေဘာတူလက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးခဲ့ျပီးျဖစ္သည္။ ႏွစ္နိုင္ငံ ဒုကၡသည္လဲလွယ္ေရးအစီအစဥ္ကို မေလးရွားကသတင္းမီဒီယာကေန ေ၀ဖန္မွဳရွိေနသည္ဟု ခ်င္းဒုကၡသည္ မ်ားဆိုင္ရာ မဟာမိတ္ေကာ္မီတီ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးကေျပာပါသည္။


ၾသစေၾတးလ်ားအစိုးရကေနဖမ္းဆည္းထားေသာမေလးရွားဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကို ၾသစေၾတးလ်ားေရတပ္ စခမ္းတြင္ထိမ္းသိမ္းထားသည္ဟု အဆိုပါဒုကၡသည္ေကာ္မီတီတာ၀န္ရွိသူမွေျပာသည္။

(၂၀၁၀)ခုႏွစ္ထဲမွာ ၾသစေၾတးလ်ႏုိင္ငံထဲသို႕ လူစုစုေပါင္းေျခာက္ေထာင္ေက်ာ္ တရားမ၀င္ေရေၾကာင္း လမ္းနဲ႕ခိုး၀င္လာခဲ့သလို (၂၀၁၁)ခုႏွစ္တြင္ ေလွစီးဒုကၡသည္ေပါင္းတစ္ေထာင္ခန္႕ေရာက္ရွိေနျပီးဟု ၾသစေၾတး လ်ႏုိင္ငံလူဝင္မႈ ႀကီးၾကပ္ေရးဌာနမွထုတ္ျပန္ထားသည္။

ယခုလိုဒုကၡသည္ဖလွယ္ေရးအစီအစဥ္အရျဖစ္လာလ်ွင္ ျမန္မာနို္င္ငံသားဒုကၡသည္(၄၀၀၀)ေလာက္ကို ၾသစေၾတးလ်နိုင္ငံကေနလက္ခံသြားရမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ မေလးရွားနိုင္ငံထဲတြင္ ျမန္မာဒုကၡသည္ေပါင္း (၈) ေသာင္း ေက်ာ္ရွိေနသည္ဟုခ်င္းဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာမဟာမိတ္ေကာ္မီတီ တာ၀န္ရွိသူတစ္ဦးမွေျပာသည္။ အဆိုပါဒုကၡသည္မ်ားကို UNHCRေခၚဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာမဟာမင္းၾကီးရံုးမွကူညီေစာင့္ေရွာက္မွဳေပးထား ပါသည္။

ကိုသိုက္ သတင္း - ေ႐ႊဟသၤာ သတင္းဌာန

In this June 8, 2011 photo, Burmese refugee children attend their school class in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Photo: AP)

BANGKOK — While a new refugee swap deal between Australia and Malaysia will offer hope to some of the tens of thousands of Burmese refugees in Malaysia, there are different views on whether the arrangement lives up to international standards.
The “Arrangement on Transfer and Resettlement” was signed in Kuala Lumpur on July 25 by Malaysia's Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and Australia's Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Bowen. It will transfer 4,000 refugees in Malaysia to Australia over the next four years, in return for Malaysia taking in 800 asylum-seekers arriving in Australia or interdicted at sea en route to Australia after July 25. Australia will pay for the deal, predicted to cost around US $325million over the current four-year implementation timetable, with Australia already saying the deal could be expanded.
As Burmese nationals make up an estimated 80-90 percent of refugees in Malaysia, the deal offers some hope to the small additional percentage that will benefit from the arrangement over the coming four years.
“We are happy that at least some of the people will get the opportunity to have a new life in Australia,” said Simon Sang Hre, who works with the Chin Refugee Committee in Malaysia, assisting what his organization estimates at 42,000 ethnic Chin refugees from Chin State in Burma, speaking to The Irrawaddy by telephone from Kuala Lumpur.
However, there are mixed feelings about the deal. Latheefa Koya, an adviser to Lawyers for Liberty, a Malaysian NGO, told The Irrawaddy that “the thousands of refugees, mostly Burmese, who have yet to be registered with the UN Refugee Agency cannot benefit.”
Of particular concern are Burmese Rohingya fleeing persecution in western Burma, where they are denied citizenship and consequently cannot register as refugees in Malaysia, adds Latheefa Koya. “This deal is unlikely to benefit the Rohingya in Malaysia,” she said.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Malaysia, there are some 94,400 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the organization. Of these “86,500 are from Myanmar [Burma], comprising some 35,600 Chins, 21,400 Rohingyas, 10,100 Myanmar Muslims, 3,800 Mon, 3,400 Kachins and other ethnicities from Myanmar.” UNCHR says that there are around 10,000 unregistered asylum-seekers or refugees in Malaysia, though some NGOs believe there are tens of thousands of unregistered refugees.
Others have criticized the deal as flawed due to Malaysia's refusal to sign up to international refugee laws. In a statement issued in response to the signing of the Australia-Malaysia deal, Australia's Human Rights Commission President Catherine Branson said that “while the Commission recognized the need for regional and international cooperation on asylum seekers and supported the resettling in Australia of an increased number of refugees,” she was “concerned that Malaysia was not a signatory to the Refugee Convention.”
According to Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch, the deal should not have been signed, as “the gap in the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers between Australia and Malaysia remains enormous.”
A March 2011 survey of over 1,000 refugees in Malaysia by the Health Equity and Initiatives in March of this year found that 70 percent of the interviewees showed symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress as a result of human trafficking, forced labor and unemployment. 
However, the Australian government claims the deal will not result in any abuses of the 800 to be sent to Malaysia. According to a July 25 press statement by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister Bowen, “The arrangement reaffirms Malaysia's commitment that transferees will be treated with dignity and respect in accordance with human rights standards, that it will respect the principle of non-refoulement, the key tenet of the Refugee Convention, and that asylum claims will be considered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).”
Yante Ismail, a spokesperson for UNHCR Malaysia, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that “UNHCR assesses that the final Arrangement and its implementing guidelines contain these safeguards, and are workable.”
However, even the positive aspects of the deal are being criticized for potentially creating a two-tier system. Once the 800 arrivals are processed, they will receive benefits that the the 94,400 registered refugees in Malaysia do not get, such as work rights and access to education and health care.
Link:    http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21788
Karlis Salna, AAP South-East Asia Correspondent


Muhammad Rafique can't deny his hopes have been boosted by the Malaysia deal, but tears well up in his eyes as he explains that 15 years as a refugee have taught him not to be so foolish as to trust such feelings.
On the walls inside the squalid shack where he lives with his wife and young child are a map of Burma and a poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The 34-year-old, an ethnic Rohingya who arrived in Malaysia from Burma when he was 19, is desperate to know whether he and his family might be among the 4000 refugees that will be resettled in Australia.
Under the deal signed in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, Australia will resettle 1000 bona-fide refugees a year over four years, in exchange for Malaysia taking the next 800 asylum seekers that arrive in Australia by boat.
But Rafique and his family are just three among more than 90,000 refugees in Malaysia.
"I want to go to Australia with my family. I hope to have a chance to go to Australia," he said.
It's obvious when he speaks that he sees their chances as bleak.
His English is poor and, having been a refugee for his entire adult life, Rafique has no skills.
He believes his chances are even poorer because the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which will have input into who makes it into the 4000, "doesn't like to send Muslim people to Australia".
"I am worried the UNHCR don't want to pick me and my family. I fear the UNHCR will not want to listen to me."
Unlike the 800 asylum seekers that will be transferred from Australia, Rafique has no rights to work or access to education.
He has little access to health care, and like many of the refugees waiting in a long queue in Malaysia, Rafique suffers from anxiety and depression brought on by the parlous life he and his family live, and their uncertain future.
A study by the non-government organisation, Health Equity and Initiatives (HEI), in March this year found that 70 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia suffered symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress as a result of human trafficking, forced labour and unemployment.
Xavier Pereira, the director of HEI, said the figure was three times higher than in any normal population.
"Both men and women are equally affected, especially those who are unemployed, involved in human trafficking and forced labour," he said.
The level of anxiety was much higher among those who were yet to be granted refugee status, according to the study of 1074 asylum seekers and refugees, aged between 18 to 70 years.
Rafique has been ripped off by agents that have promised to help with resettlement in another country, and he admits to having paid a people smuggler in a failed attempt to make it to Australia on a boat.
He cannot return to Burma, according to Amnesty International, because as he is from the Rohingya minority, the Burmese authorities would refuse to grant him citizenship, rendering him stateless.
In Burma, he would suffer from systematic persecution, including forced labour, forced eviction, land confiscation, and severe restrictions on freedom of movement.
He says he will now do the right thing and wait, and hope for a chance of resettlement in Australia.
But he says others will still pay people smugglers and get on the boats in a perilous crossing to Australia, despite the deal with Malaysia meaning that within 72 hours, they will be sent back.
"They will still go, whatever chance they have, they must try to go, even if it means they go to the back of the queue," Rafique said.

Link : http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8039181669102650263

By acorcoran

I was interested in this story—Nashua, NH fretting about whether it would get more refugees if Manchester gets a moratorium—anyway. But, then I note that we are quietly resettling Rohingya refugees in New Hampshire.

For years I followed the story of Rohingya Muslim refugees leaving Burma and it interested me because for years the US State Department resisted the pressure from NGOs to resettle them here. (The Rohingya are also among the illegal aliens trying to get into Thailand and Australia). But, at some point in 2010 we started resettling Rohingya in American towns and cities and so I gave up posting much on them—it was kind of hopeless.

BTW, here is one of 98 posts I’ve written on Rohingya in a special category entitled Rohingya Reports. It is a post from April 2010 about how the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) was pushing hard to add Rohingya to their collection of ethnic groups to add diversity to your town! If anyone in New Hampshire wants to know more about Rohingya, just read through those 98 posts going back to 2007.
USCRI is the federal contractor that subcontracts the International Institute of New Hampshire. operating in Manchester. Incidentally, another USCRI subcontractor was closed by the US State Department in Waterbury, CT after a real (honest to goodness) investigative reporter found the refugees living in squalor and dared to write a series of articles about it.

Lutheran Social Services is a competing contractor. If Manchester gets a moratorium, presumably Lutheran Social Services will get the job (and the per head payment!) since they must control the Nashua turf.

So that is some of the background, now here is the story from the Nashua Telegraph from last week:

As Manchester city officials attempt to put a halt on new refugees being placed in the city, it’s unknown what the impact would be on Nashua if the moratorium were granted.

Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of State requesting a two-year moratorium on new refugees being resettled in the city.

The state’s largest city has been the primary resettlement location for refugees in New Hampshire. Between 2002 and 2009, Manchester received 1,807 of the state’s 2,966 new refugees, or roughly 60 percent.

By comparison, Nashua, the state’s second-largest city, received only 70 refugees during that same period, much fewer than Concord and Laconia, which received 778 and 260, respectively.

The most recent group of refugees to come to Nashua were roughly a dozen Rohingya people, seeking refuge from the Burmese government. More are expect to be resettled in Nashua in the coming year.

Amy Marchildon, who oversees refugee resettlement in New Hampshire for Lutheran Social Services, said Nashua is in line to receive another 50 to 70 Rohingya refugees over the next year, but there’s no way to know for sure whether those numbers will pan out.

I wonder why the states cower so and don’t just tell the US State Department NO! Or, at least do what Tennessee has done and start to take more local goverment control of refugee resettlement.
Lengthy verification by Bangladesh dashes hopes of traumatised men

  • By Umarah Jamali, Correspondent
  • Published: July 19, 2011 
  • Myanmar and Bangladeshi men are seen in a boat without an engine minutes before being rescued by an Indian Coast Guard patrol in 2009.   
  • Kolkata: "It has been more than two years that I have been waiting to go home. My wife, my children and my old parents are all anxiously waiting for me in Bangladesh. Please help me return to my home as soon as possible," 40-year-old Kabir Ahmad appealed to a group of rights activists who met him in a Port Blair jail recently.
Our Correspondent . Cox’s Bazaar
At least 20 people, including several Rohingya refugees, were injured in a clash at Kutupalong in Ukhiya of Cox’s Bazar on Saturday afternoon.
According to the Ukhiya police, some unregistered Rohingya refugees, who are living in surrounding areas of Kutupalong government recognised refugee camp, went to the adjacent government forest area for collecting fire wood.
Ukhiya, Bangladesh: Kaladan Press
 
 Camp authorities raided and seized all the equipment from a workshop at the official Kutupalong Refugee Camp on July 10, a refugee at the camp said.

A group of camp security personnel, camp police, and office staff including the Camp-in-Charge went to refugee mechanic Md. Ayas’s shack and seized all equipment from his workshop inside his shack for the reason that refugees are not allowed to work in the camp.
Boatpeople apprehended five months ago on Phuket remain prisoners

By Alan Morison and Chutima Sidasathian 
 PHUKET: Concerns are growing for the physical and mental health of 33 Rohingya, some as young as 14, who have been held in isolation in a cramped cell on Phuket since February.

One teenage Rohingya is believed to have recently fallen sick and been admitted to a Phuket hospital, with others are also thought to be suffering the effects of prolonged incarceration in cramped conditions.
By ARASA / ASIA SENTINEL Thursday, July 7, 2011
In this April, 2009 photo, two Australian naval vessels intercept a boat carrying asylum seekers of Australia's shores. (Photo: AP) 
Australia urgently needs to stop the snake heads who are delivering an unceasing inflow of unlawful or illegal boat arrivals demanding admission to the country as refugees. The solution being proposed by the Labor government led by Julia Gillard, however, has kicked off a storm of political controversy in Canberra, where it remains stalled.



RANONG : Provincial authorities are taking steps to ensure the new ID cards for children are not issued to the offspring of foreign migrant workers.


A registration official of Yala municipality tests equipment for the production of ID cards for children aged seven and above. The issuance of ID cards for the young will begin on Sunday and officials of Yala municipality will produce ID cards for about 1,300 local children at their schools. MUHAMMAD AYUB PATHANRanong governor Wanchart Wongchaichana said yesterday children will be thoroughly screened to prevent the system being abused. The Identity Card Act of 2011 requires Thais to have ID cards from the age of seven to 70. Previously, the minimum age of ID card holders was 15. The issuance of the new cards will start this Sunday.

By Francis Wade Jun 27, 2011
Refugees sit in a detention center on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Pic: AP.
The Australian government’s apathetic treatment of refugees and asylum seekers has long been a blot on its record – an irony given the historical make-up of the country and its rulers. Any hope that the new Gillard administration would reverse the hawkish policies of former prime minister John Howard, who championed the island gulags that hold thousands of refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma and elsewhere, has been short-lived – Gillard, herself a Welsh immigrant to Australia, is pushing ahead with a plan to send hundreds of refugees to Malaysia, one of only a handful of countries not to have ratified the UN refugee convention and which is therefore not bound by international laws dictating how refugees should be treated.
MAHN SAIMON 
Refugees struggle as EU cuts aid thumbnail
Ethnic Karen children play in the rain in Mae La refugee camp, Thailand (Reuters)

Burmese refugees living in camps along the Thai border say they have been receiving less food and housing material since the EU reduced border aid earlier this year, triggering concerns about the extent to which already difficult conditions in the camps will be exacerbated.


By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Monday, June 20, 2011
View inside Mae La Camp 
MAE SOT/MAE LA, Thailand— Oblivious to the late afternoon downpour, six children chase each other near the roadside fence at Mae La, the biggest of nine refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma frontier.
“Please, no photos of the people,” implores a man standing nearby, sheltering against the wall of one of the thousands of timber huts along the roadside. Three of the children are his, although he refuses to give his name, saying only that he crossed to Thailand from Burma's Karen State “more than one year ago” and has been confined to the camp ever since.
Acting on the orders of Tak Provincial Governor Samart Loifah, Thai officials started a headcount in Mae La as well as Umpiem Mai and Nu Pu—the two other camps in Tak province. The census is ongoing, with roughly 40 percent of the estimated 140,000 Burmese refugee population in Thailand unregistered.
By FRANCIS WADE ,Published: 20 June 2011
Burma a top source country for refugees thumbnail
A Karen man carriess his mother through the Thai town of Mae Sot in November 2010. Up to 20,000 refugees fled fighting in Karen state (Reuters)

Burma produces the world’s fifth highest number of refugees, above that of both war-torn Sudan and Colombia, according to a UN report released today to mark World Refugee Day.
It emphasised that developing countries are the ones who are shouldering the burden of those fleeing violence and persecution, a concern that will ring true for the hundreds of thousands who have escaped Burma to neighbouring Thailand and Bangladesh.

June 11, 2011,

Charlie Hall
More than 700 Burmese have found refuge in the New Bern and Craven County area in recent years, escaping religious and political persecution.
They will be the highlight of this year’s local World Refugee Day June 18 at the New Bern Farmers Market. A community panel discussion about Burma is planned the evening before at the Christ Church Ministry Center on Middle Street.
The events are sponsored by the Interfaith Refugee Ministry.
“The panel discussion should be good because we are trying to get people from all over the community to come in and listen to some of these folks tell about their experiences,” said Chick Natella of the refugee ministry. “The name of it is Burma in the past, present and future, as far as our city is concerned.”
Some of the 96 Pakistani refugees show their joy after being released on bail yesterday from a detention centre in Bangkok with the help of the National Human Rights Commission. SOMCHAI POOMLARD

Human rights advocates said they hoped the newly launched Refugee Freedom Fund could be used to assist other illegal immigrants and stateless people such as that of the Rohingya groups, some of which have been locked up in detention centres for years.
The 96 Ahmadi Muslims walked out of Suan Phlu Immigration Detention Centre after the National Human Rights Commission and Thai Committee for Refugees (TCR) put up 5 million baht bail for them from the fund.
The refugees, including 34 children below the age of 12, smiled or shed tears of joy as they left the detention centre where they had languished for about six months.
In March this year, East Timor officially submitted its application to the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat to join the organization. If the application is successful, Timor Leste will become ASEAN`s 11th member.
To date East Timor’s application has gained considerable support from a number of the ASEAN member states like Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippine, Malaysia including Indonesia, the former occupier of East Timor from 1975-1999. Indonesia has been vocal in advocating for East Timor’s bid to join ASEAN despite the historical animosity between the two countries, dating back to East Timor’s separation from Indonesia in 1999.
However, East Timor’s chance of joining ASEAN has been increasingly uncertain after Singapore voiced its objection. It is argued that currently East Timor is still experiencing a lack of capable human resources which enable the country to effectively take part in at least the 1000 or more ASEAN meetings that are held annually. They further argued that economically East Timor is not ready to compete both regionally and internationally, hence preparations are needed prior to the ascension.

    • Rohingya Exodus