The ongoing humanitarian crisis exposes dangerous vacuum at the centre of ASEAN’s commitment to be ‘people-centred’, writes Mathew Davies.
Myanmar’s membership of ASEAN, achieved in 1997, has always been a test of the rules and norms that govern the regional body.
But the nature of that test has changed with the plight of the Rohingya, 8,000 of which are now trapped at sea – unable to make landfall in neighbouring states. ASEAN, and its members, are failing this test, a failure which will have lethal consequences for one of the most vulnerable people of the region.
In the past the test that Myanmar posed was to the diplomatic rules of ASEAN – commitments to non-intervention and sovereign equality. In the past ASEAN member states showed that they were willing to chastise Myanmar publicly when, for example in 2007, it engaged in harsh repression of the Saffron Revolution. George Yeo, then Singaporean Foreign Minister, went so far as to express his ‘revulsion’ at the crackdown – a radical and undiplomatic tone to use towards a fellow ASEAN member.
The test posed for ASEAN by the current crisis is far more existential than that they faced in the 2000s. The Rohingya expose the dangerous vacuum at the heart of ASEAN’s commitment to become people-centred. We have gone from a test of a set of diplomatic rules to a test of the very moral purpose of ASEAN as a body. This is a test ultimately for the members of ASEAN, and the signs suggest that they will be found wanting.
With the lives of thousands in jeopardy, it is not chastisement but deafening silence that characterises ASEAN’s ‘response’. ASEAN as an organisation has said nothing at all, and ASEAN members seem to be complicit in the misery of the Rohingya rather than attempting to find a solution. Indonesia and Malaysia have ordered their naval forces to return any Rohingya boats to sea. Thailand, the traditional destination for many Rohingya refugees has recently cracked down on the people-smuggling system, pushing the boats further south in search of landfall.
This is not the first instance of ASEAN and regional states paying little regard to the Rohingya – both have eagerly welcomed Myanmar’s carefully controlled experiment with limited democracy even as the government of President Thein Sein has ever more callously repressed the Rohingya in Rakhine State. Widespread accusations of the role of Myanmar’s military forces in stoking and exploiting ethnic tensions in Rakhine State have been almost completely ignored in the rush to consider Myanmar a problem solved. Western countries have been similarly disinterested – lifting sanctions and hurrying to do business with a government that was busy getting its hands bloody.
This is not, officially, a failure of ASEAN – there are no rules that say ASEAN should be helping, no intervention force that can be mobilised and, with Myanmar preferring to term the Rohingya illegal migrants rather than citizens, technical arguments could be made that there is nothing ASEAN can do to people who have the protection of no state in the region.
But all of that is beside the point, a moral tragedy hidden behind legalese. ASEAN has, with much fanfare, labelled itself as ‘people-centred’. The entire public justification of the ASEAN Community project, to be finalised this year, is to make ASEAN more caring, more focused on the lives of the people of the region not just the elites. The plight of the Rohingya refugees, trapped on unseaworthy boats limping across Southeast Asia, reveals the dangerous hollowness of this people-centred claim.
Here then is the key test ASEAN faces. It is not just about the Rohingya, but they are the current way this test is being experienced. Ultimately to care about the people of the region is to place them before the governments that persecute them. This choice is something that regional states seem very reluctant to do, preferring the platitudes of charters and declarations rather than the difficult decisions required to bring those commitments to life.
If regional states fail in their response to the Rohingya, preferring to let them die at sea rather than live on their land, then it is not just Myanmar that has been found wanting relative to ASEAN’s professed transformation – it is every state that made that decision. This would be a true sign that the cancer of disinterest is to be found not only in the most likely cases, the corridors of power in Myanmar, but in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta.
In that world, what would the point of ASEAN be?
Dr Mathew Davies is a fellow and senior lecturer researching human rights and ASEAN at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University.
Malaysia pushed the Vietnamese “boat people” out to sea, after the fall of Saigon (though, later in the 1980s, did allow many temporary refuge in East Malaysia), so why are the “Rohingya” special ? Because they are Muslim ? Almost every article in the news is about the “Palestinians of Myanmar”. I have yet to see one article about the history of the first wave of boat people, that Malaysia let drown. I am not surprised. It is the usual campiness of the Left, finely attuned to Orwell: All cultures are equal but some (Islamic) cultures are more equal than others. I suppose we have to wait till 12 million Syrians are slaughtered, before they get equal time with the Rohingya. Last time I checked, the Rohingya weren’t being gassed with Clorine, but I am sure the always fair and objective Press will find a way, to ensure they are. And for every boat of Rohingya, another 200,000 Sudanese have been raped and massacred, oh but they are mostly Muslim and not even in Asia, so let’s not worry too much about them.
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Since when has, what you refer to as “Left” an islamic or islamist agenda?
It seems that too many persons, especially journalists and international NGO use the Rohingya refugee problem for their own ends. So far, those who do have knowledge and information about the situation are hardly ever referred to.
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Does one instance of callousness towards those in danger justify another?
If so, yes, many groups have been persecuted in the past while third parties looked on and refused to help… so it’s OK for that to happen again to any group?
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Have you seen with your own eyes Bamar people “push” “Rohingya” out to sea ? Does one instance of disingenuousness justify all the rest ? Does Bangladesh’s failure to institute birth control justify Myanmar merely letting in anyone who wants come in ? And if Dhaka cares so much, why aren’t they willing to take back what is theirs, anyway ?
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In the Indonesian press, there usually is a great hype about Palestinians and what Israel is doing, but until recently a silence about what the Burmese are doing to the Rohingya.
In fact Indonesian are starting to show an interest in what happens in Asia is a good thing. Because at least they can do something about it, unlike in the ME
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There is nothing in the Indonesian Press about Indonesian persecution of Indonesian Ahmadi Muslims (Ahmadiyya) and Indonesian Shi’ites. Perhaps, they should show an interest in their own Islamic minorities, before they “worry” about Bangladeshi Muslim migrants aspiring to be Burmese.
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“Indonesia and Malaysia have ordered their naval forces to return any Rohingya boats to sea.”
It is a duty for Muslims to spread Islam by any means … That is why Muslim countries refuse to take their share of the Muslim migrants ! Read Marshall Sahlins “The segmentary lineage : An Organization of predatory expansion” (in American Anthropologist, 63, 1961, pp. 322-43) !
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I can safely say that the idea of an ASEAN Economic Community exists only as a fantasy in bureaucrats’ minds. It has no meaning whatsoever to the ordinary citizen. ASEAN itsef only functions as a talkshop where summits are meant for mutual backslapping and pageantry. Why else would Myanmar have signed up in the first place if it didn’t see ASEAN as a toothless tiger?
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Perhaps hrk, you can ask Jake Lynch at Sydney University, an avowed Leftist and virulent defender of Islamic causes, or John Esposito at Georgetown University. You have been hibernating for a very long time. You have to be deaf, dumb and blind, not to see the causal relationship, which was rightly criticized by Liberals, (late) Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie. Islamism should NOT be a Leftist cause and before Edward Said, it was less so. I hardly think those defending Islamism, today, are clones of T.E. Lawrence. Get real…
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“Islamism should NOT be a Leftist cause”.
By refusing to be coherent and abide by their most basic postulates that Left is pushing to the Right lots of people who did not originally belong there… West has been manipulated by the Saudis, and Israel, for the last 50 years …
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The West has not been “manipulated by Israel for the last 50 years”, but they have been manipulated by Leftist cant and Islamist Taqiyya. Israel has many Leftists, who sadly, buy into the same dichotomous paradigms of the rotting academy.
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Charles Santiago, Malaysian MP for Klang, really put it best when he described ASEAN as
“… really nothing more than a group of powerful people who indulge in much backslapping and handshakes, sit at dinner tables pretending all is well and ignore raising crucial issues to ensure they themselves are not put in a tight spot.”
http://www.rohingyablogger.com/2015/04/resolving-rohingya-statelessness-issues.html#sthash.u3hGmykk.dpuf
ASEAN already faced a “test” over the 2012 state enforced disappearance of Lao civil society leader Sombath Somphone.
ASEAN has done nothing.
Indeed…. what is the point of ASEAN.
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Charles Santiago, chairperson of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and a member of parliament in Malaysia, criticises Indonesian, Malaysian and Thai governments for their stance on the current refugee issue.
Ironically, the secretary-general of his party, Lim Guan Eng (they are both from opposition Democratic Action Party), agrees (happens very rarely) with Prime Minister Najib Razak. How bizarre.
– See more at: http://m.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/05/17/refugee-crisis-asean-s-great-moral-paralysis.html#sthash.iU3eTmrA.dpuf
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Regarding ASEAN’s “toothlessness” and “ineffectual cohesion”
http://www.startribune.com/rohingya-crisis-highlights-toothless-nature-of-asean/304224371/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/indonesia-malaysia-agree-to-give-temporary-shelter-to-migrants-still-stranded-at-sea/article24507965/
“Myanmar officials have said they will not attend if the word “Rohingya” is mentioned…”
“This is not an ASEAN problem,” [Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman]
– ASEAN couldn’t organise themselves to find their way out of a wet paper bag.
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Too noisy and futile really. Runs out of metaphors. Flogging the dead horse?
It all started when it became clear, Aung San Suu Kyi is not going anywhere for the “western investment” in her. The once universally and eternally despicable “regime” which instantly became headed in 2011 (even though they voted themselves in much earlier!) by THE “reformist” president (rather like a born-again Christian) who was then worthy of Nobel Peace Prize according to none-other-than Myanmar Expert Nicholas Farrelly, is now under well-coordinated “verbal abuse?” from all corners of usual opinion influence-rs.- media, academics, human right organizations, etc., the usual suspects. Time magazine even went to the trouble of insensitively invoking Nepal double-earth quake victims to prefer that than to live with the “Myanmar’s reformist regime” under the Nobel Peace Prize contender president.
ASEAN being a waste of space! Well, that is new and enlightening.
By the way, when Howard lied to the Australian public that the “Muslims” were throwing babies overboard to win the election landslide, it says less of how despicable and lowly Howard was, but more of how the “fair minded” Australians were.
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Jungle law at sea:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044584/Pray-Allah-ll-throw-overboard-Muslims-ordered-Christians-punctured-dinghy-African-migrants-sank-Mediterranean.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/indonesia/11611501/How-migrants-stranded-at-sea-off-Indonesia-resorted-to-stabbing-each-other-to-survive.html
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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick-17576/?no-ist
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Like a primary school project of “Find most extreme ways to embarasse the once “reformist” Thein Sein regime by using this easy topic of migrant cahos which every nation hates without exception” competition.
And just that, primary school essay project.
http://time.com/3859386/rohingya-refugees-nepal-earthquake-burma-myanmar/
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Let us think for the safety of Bangladeshi and Rohingya boat people. If they can choose the land route to Malaysia across Myanmar and Thailand, they don’t need to risk their lives at sea. Therefore let us try to give pressure to Myanmar Government to give the rights to Rohingyas, free travelling across Myanmar. New business opportunity of trafficking Bangladeshi and Rohingyas via land route will be interesting.
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