Dance of death on boats

Finally, humanity has prevailed: Indonesia and Malaysia have offered shelter to 7000 'boat people' adrift at high sea for the last many weeks. They were denied landing by show of force by the two countries, rebuffing appeals from a number of human rights organisations. The shelter being provided is temporary and they would take no more. However, Thailand whose long overdue action against their highly organized human smugglers syndicates provoked the governments in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur to push back the boat people remains in denial. And so are the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh from where come the boat people, fleeing persecution and poverty. Human smuggling across high seas to green pastures in Malaysia and beyond has been a flourishing business for quite some time. Only during the first three months of 2015 about 25,000 migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh on rickety boats, some reaching nowhere as their traffickers abandoned them at sea fearing interdiction by coastal guards of intended destination navies. What terrible ordeal these unfortunate seekers of better fortune and safer life an incident that took place on a stranded fishing trawler in the Andaman Sea last week go through merits recall - to comprehend the enormity of challenge of illegal migration from homelands to other countries. About 800 people, half of them Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar and half from Bangladesh, were stranded on a fishing trawler abandoned by smugglers frightened by crackdown announced by Thailand and joined by Indonesia and Malaysia. As rations dwindled they split up and then there was 'it's us or them', some yelled and the fighting started. By the time rescue was made more than 100 of them had died because of violence and starvation. And this was not the only boat found abandoned at sea. And the Andaman Sea is not the expanse of blue water which is devouring up migrants fleeing poverty and persecution the Mediterranean is also eating up humans on the run from oppression and deprivation. Of some two thousands who drowned on way to greener pastures in Europe include 950, some locked in the hold, went down with the ship.
It is indeed a huge tragedy that not all who flee poverty and persecution in their homelands make to their destinations. But no less frustrating is the reality that the governments who should feel concerned over their people running away from them are not much bothered about it. It is the European Union parliament that has asked Aung San Suu Kyi to break her silence over the unending plight of Rohingya Muslims - and it seems that message has reached her and she is reported to have asked the Myanmar government to give citizenship to Rohingya Muslims. In fact, she should go a step further and ask the government to respect and recognise Rohingyas as Myanmar citizens by birth. The Myanmar junta wants to throw them out, dubbing them as illegal immigrants and thus stateless people. That is in blatant disregard of historical truth. They are not illegal immigrants, as they were there on that land as the core group in the medieval kingdom of Arakan. How come the EU parliament stands up for their right but the fellow ASEAN fellow members, who instead of pressuring Myanmar against the expulsion of its Muslim citizens are conspicuously indifferent to this grim human tragedy? Will they stand up and ask the fellow ASEAN member Thailand who is buried in the recently discovered mass graves in the south of the country? Well, if the government in Dhaka has offered to take back the 'certified' Bangladeshi citizens it should be welcomed. But there got to be an answer as to why people flee their homelands and a lasting solution to create environments sympathetic enough for all citizens irrespective of their ethnic, religious and, linguistic affinities. The lingering plight of Rohingya Muslims at the hands of country's Buddhist majority is a challenge for the entire world. That a person of Aung San Suu Kyi's credentials had to pose nonchalance about their plight is a measure of the enormity of this challenge. But this has to be met fair and square. This macabre dance of death on boats must top. After all those who perished on the high seas were human beings.