THE world is agog with concern over the plight of the Muslim Rohingyas in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and its co-religionists from Bangladesh following recent mishaps in the open sea as hundreds if not thousands of them were abandoned by human traffickers.
But whose concern should these hapless migrants fleeing political persecution and economic deprivation be?
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said in Japan this week that it is an international responsibility. It may be so but the “international community” is at best a rather amorphous entity and its clearest manifestation, the United Nations, is dysfunctional, short of funds and in any case has more than its share of global humanitarian and other disasters that it is struggling to cope.
The added complication is that all three countries at the receiving end of the current stream of boat people — Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia — for understandable reasons are not parties to the UN’s refugee conventions since unlike mostly Western nations which see as their mission to convert emerging nations to democracy and provide safe havens to those fleeing political repression, we are not so persuaded over such political nostrums.
While the “international community” thus grapples with this latest humanitarian conundrum, with some countries treating it more hypocritically than others, it is, as always, left to countries most immediately affected to draw on their own meagre resources and call upon the resources of friendly third parties to address the problem.
Some suggest that since this issue affects the region first and foremost, it is something Asean should therefore take up.
But the fact that the Asean Secretariat in Jakarta could only come up with a limp online petition over this matter perhaps exposes the severe limitations of the regional body despite all the lofty goals attached to it.
Almost by default, the onus falls back on Malaysia, not least because we happen to be the rotating Asean Chair this year. Frenetic diplomacy by Foreign Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman and his Indonesian and Thai counterparts may help us arrive at some acceptable stopgap measures but clearly, a lasting solution requires Myanmar and Bangladesh to get their acts together.
With Bangladesh, the rather dismissive and insensitive remarks of its prime minister about migrants originating from its shores are hardly encouraging.
However, it is Myanmar that is drawing the widest attention for the moment. The Financial Times, perhaps sensationalising it somewhat, has likened the treatment the Rohingyas are getting from the Myanmar authorities to the treatment the Jews got from Nazi Germany.
But of course Myanmar is not helping itself on the public relations front if nothing else with the images of recent times of Rohingya settlements in Rakhine state ransacked and razed to the ground and provocative incitement by Buddhist monks, of all people.
There is also the rather blatantly racist talk making the rounds of legislated birth-control measures targeting the Rohingyas who are of course mostly not recognised as Myanmar citizens and therefore disenfranchised. Things are massively not helped by the continued silence of the country’s democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, in the face of all this.
Still, it would be wrong for Malaysia to simply pile on the pressures towards Myanmar.
Myanmar has shown itself to be a stubbornly proud nation and mostly impervious to outside pressure.
The Rohingyas of Rakhine are, after all, another of those sad colonial legacies that have festered like open sores in much the same manner as problems from Palestine to Syria and Iraq and much of the tribal rivalries plaguing border regions of new African nation-states.
If not for a twist of fate, Malaysia might very well have landed in exactly the same pickle as these unfortunate lands. We must draw upon the power of our own example to show that however imperfectly it might have been (and continues to be), there is an alternative path these benighted nations can take towards peaceable if not peaceful relations between seemingly irreconcilable communities for the greater good of a better nation they all must strive towards.
The power of the Malaysian example is the spirit of generosity and compromise that infused our Merdeka promise to create a new, multiracial nation through the acceptance of immigrants brought in by our colonial rulers before as citizens with full constitutional rights.
Nation-building has not been a walk in the park even for us all these years but Malaysians recognise, as Myanmars should, that there can be no turning back on the deck dealt us by the departing colonialists.
The writer is a Kuching-based journalist