Young Muslim asylum-seekers from Myanmar wait at Belawan immigration detention centre in Sumatra. Picture: Picture: Jefri Tarigan Source: The Australian
Rohingya refugee Zahid Hussin. Source: The Australian
TWO years ago the Indonesian office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had fewer than 50 Rohingya asylum-seekers on its books. Today there are more than 800, and nearly all are trying to get to Australia.
"Some of my friends have gone to Australia already and after two or three years they get citizenship," Feazel Ali tells The Australian. "Finally they can live in peace."
Ali left Myanmar in 1994 and lived in Malaysia for 13 years before he, his wife and five children took a boat to Sumatra two months ago, hoping somehow to get a passage to Australia.
"Australians have pity for refugees, but actually anywhere that wants to accept us, I wouldn't mind," he says.
"I want to work. I want my children to have a high school education."
Like many other asylum-seekers, he clings to the illusion that Australians would welcome his family, if only they knew his people's plight. The reality is, as refugee officials say privately, no government wants the Rohingya, who are commonly described as among the most persecuted people in the world.
Most of the dark-skinned Shia Muslim asylum-seekers who have reached Indonesiaare in immigration detention at Belawan, North Sumatra, or under UNHCR care in the community in nearby Medan.
Elsewhere in Indonesia they barely attracted notice until March 5, when men in the Belawan centre turned on 11 Burmese Buddhist fishermen and murdered eight of them.
The victims had been arrested for fishing illegally off Aceh last July and were vastly outnumbered by more than 100 Rohingyas.
"Those Buddhists were drunk every night, they molested the women when they went to the toilet," said 38-year-old Muhammad Khan, who is in Medan after being arrested in January crossing from Malaysia with his family.
"The immigration officers told them, 'You cannot do that, this is Indonesia, not Myanmar'. But one Buddhist, Nawee, would not stop."
Rape, retaliatory murder, Muslims smashing into Buddhists - it is a reverse image of the violence ripping through Myanmar's Rakhine state, where more than 115,000 Rohingyas have been driven from their homes by Buddhist mob rampages.
Refused citizenship in their western Burma homeland, Rohingyas have long posed a huge refugee challenge to Bangladesh and Thailand, where more than 400,000 people live in festering border camps.
Now fresh waves of communal strife in Rakhine and harsh conditions in Malaysia, which grudgingly supports more than 24,000 UNHCR-registered Rohingya asylum-seekers, are pushing them into Indonesia in growing numbers.
There, worryingly for Australian authorities, they are starting to use "normal" southbound people-smuggling channels.
In 2010, the UNHCR registered only 30 Rohingyas arriving in Indonesia. That increased to 200 the following year, but even then many arrivals were accidental, with boats headed for the Malaysian coast found lost and adrift off Aceh.
Last year there were 360 people and this year there have already been more than 270.
At least 130 Rohingyas have been detained in the past eight days trying to get to Australia - 95 of them in two boats that were also carrying Bangladeshis, Iranians and Iraqis.
Refugee officials say almost all the Rohingyas interviewed in Indonesia are trying to get to Australia, though most would be happy with a visa for Canada, the US or New Zealand - other countries they believe would be welcoming.
"Whatever country wants to accept me, I will go there, wherever I can work and study and live safely," says Zahid Hussin, one of the earlier Rohingya arrivals in Medan from Malaysia.
He gives his age as 26 but he's already been looking for a safe place for 11 years. His family neighbourhood in Rakhine was burnt out long before the current troubles started.
Hussin says he has worked as an indentured fisherman in Cambodia, been sold with his fellow crew to a Thai fishing boat owner and in Malaysia been picked up by police wanting bribes for his release.
After deciding in 2010 to make his way to Australia, he scraped together about $12,000 to pay a people-smuggler for the first stage of the journey, across the Malacca Strait.
On arrival in Sumatra with 15 other Rohingyas, Hussin says he was taken into custody and beaten so thoroughly that he was "always dizzy" for a long time afterwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment