Migrants still in limbo across South-east Asia, one year after crisis

BAYEUN (Indonesia) — When Mr Mohammed Salim washed ashore on the coast of Aceh province in Indonesia during the South-east Asian refugee crisis last year, he was hungry, thirsty, emaciated and exhausted. All he wanted was rice, water and to get to a safe nation. “America, Australia, anywhere,” he said then.

A year later, he appeared healthier and cleaner, but nowhere closer to getting somewhere.

Most of the thousands of migrants who survived the crisis and reached land in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have either been returned to their home countries or smuggled elsewhere. Several hundred, including Mr Mohammed, languish in refugee camps or detention centres, praying that a Western country will take them in.

Only 46 have been resettled by a third country.

“It’s not easy,” said Mr Mohammed, 24, who was on the green-and-red fishing boat packed with men, women and children that journalists found adrift in the Andaman Sea last year. “Like I’m happy I’m alive, but mostly I’m unhappy. But I’m always thinking, third country, third country, third country, please, please.”

The crisis flared in May 2015 after the Thai authorities cracked down on brutal smuggling rings based in southern Thailand that had been spiriting migrants to Malaysia from Myanmar and Bangladesh.

As the smugglers fled, abandoning their charges at sea with no provisions or crew, the situation grew into a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia all turned away boats full of desperate migrants.

With international pressure mounting, Malaysia and Indonesia agreed to accept them temporarily. The ethnic Rohingya refugees, who were fleeing persecution in Myanmar, were expected to be granted refugee status and eventually resettled in a third country, while those from Bangladesh, who were largely economic migrants, were to be repatriated.

Most of the 1,622 Bangladeshis who landed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have been sent home, with the rest expected to follow this year. Many of the Rohingya made it to Malaysia clandestinely, blending in with the tens of thousands of Rohingya living and working there. The Malaysian government has long turned a blind eye to this migration.

But the price for the migrants is a life in the shadows, without official status and prey to exploitation by unscrupulous employers, corrupt police officers and loan sharks.

Most of the nearly 1,500 Rohingya whose arrivals in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia were officially registered have been granted refugee status or will eventually get it, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

But the vast majority remain in limbo, or worse. The 459 Rohingya officially admitted into Malaysia and Thailand have been locked in detention centres and will not be released until a third country agrees to take them in.

A report released in March by Fortify Rights, an advocacy group that investigates criminal organisations and government officials involved in human trafficking, said that the detention centres were not equipped for long-term detentions, and that the conditions there were “inhumane”.

“We thought that given all the international attention and media attention that was put on the situation last year, there was momentum that the situation could improve,” said Mr Matthew Smith, executive director of the group. “That has not been the case.”

In Indonesia, the government set up camps and shelters in Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra island, for the 999 Rohingya who ended up there. The Rohingyas were not confined, security is lax, and they can roam freely.

Within weeks of their arrival in Aceh, smugglers started scouring the camps, offering passage to Malaysia. Since most of the refugees had intended to go to Malaysia to find work, and most had gone deeply into hock to get there, many left.

Mr Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, a human rights group that tracks migration in the Andaman Sea, said smugglers had led the Rohingya to the city of Medan — a drive of four to seven hours to the south-east — where they were put on small Indonesian boats and then transferred to Malaysian boats bound for the mainland.

According to the intergovernmental International Organisation for Migration, of the 999 Rohingya who arrived in Aceh in May 2015, 723 are believed to have made it to Malaysia.

At least 53 Bangladeshis are also believed to have gone to Malaysia.

“Their families are there, and they want to work,” said Mr Lewa. “They have their own community there and have jobs.” Those who remain in Indonesia are not allowed to work while they await third-country resettlement. But they have been taking language classes in English and Indonesian, vocational training such as sewing and hair dressing, and have even been growing vegetables in a large garden.

There have been numerous fights in the camps, cases of domestic violence, illegal underage marriages and births, and frequent instances of anger and depression.

“There have been issues throughout because of this sense of not knowing what comes next — it’s helplessness,” said Ms Mariam Khokhar, head of the Organisation for Migration office in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province.

One of those who did not flee is Mr Jamal Hossain, 28. He and his wife, Sajidah, braved the smuggler boats from Myanmar with four young children a year ago, and had a fifth, a girl, in the Bayeun refugee camp in February.

Within weeks after their arrival in Aceh, said Mr Jamal, he began receiving phone calls from a smuggling network offering the family passage to Malaysia with only a down payment on the total fee of about US$3,500 (S$4,720).

Unlike many others, he had no family in Malaysia, so he declined.

“I received a second life,” he said. “Why should I risk it again?”

In May, the first Rohingya refugees from the 2015 crisis were resettled. The United States took in 43, and Canada three. Aid workers said the US was considering taking in more refugees and was encouraging other countries to do so.

The flow of migrants out of Myanmar and Bangladesh has ebbed, at least for now, because of increased patrols by those countries, as well as Thailand and Malaysia, according to international aid organisations.

The crackdown has deterred migrants and driven up the price, said Mr Alistair Boulton, assistant regional representative for protection at the UN refugees office in Bangkok.

“The price of the voyage has tripled or quadrupled,” he said.

Yet demand remains high, thanks to poor conditions in Myanmar and Bangladesh, and officials fear that smuggling could pick up again after the monsoon season winds down in September.

“Human smuggling is more profitable than drugs or guns, so these guys presumably running this are not amateurs,” said Mr Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the Organisation for Migration in Bangkok.

“If the international community and the regional governments drop their guard, this will happen again,” he said. “People want to go where there are jobs; people want to escape persecution.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES