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Jakarta ( Berita ) : The uncertainty which is now surrounding the life of Muslim Rohingya refugees in Aceh has prompted some organizations in Indonesia to call on the government to entrust them with the task of providing the refugees with assimilation programs.
A voluntary organization called Medical Emergency Rescue Commitee” (MER-C) of Indonesia proposed to help and save Muslim rohingya boat people who were found stranded off the Aceh coast in January and Fenruary 2009, with assimilation programs.
“They can be helped through assimilation programs, because Islamic boarding schools in Aceh are ready to accept them,” MER-C Indonesia Chairman dr Sarbini Abdul Murad said on his cell phone on Thursday.
Sarbini was in East Aceh district of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam to meet Muslim Rohingya refugees to provide them with health services. As many as 391 Rohingya refugees were stranded on Weh Island of Sabang and Pidie, East Aceh district and their fate came under public highlight both in Indonesia and the world.
The government had been advised not to deport them to Myanmar as they had been evicted from their villages, facing persecution and ill-treatment by the Myanmarese ruling military junta regime because they had been deprived of their Burmese citizenship.
The Rohingyas, totaling around 800,000 people in Myanmar are not recognized by the military junta as Myanmarese citizens, thus making them stateless. The military junta has brutally repressed them, and millions have risked their lives fleeing their country.
The Rohingyas, who are believed to be 7th century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by Burma in 1784, faced religious persecution because they were Muslims in a Buddhist majority country.
According to Sarbini, the process of assimilation proposed by MEC-Indonesia could quickly solve the problem facing the refugees as many Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia were ready to accept them. “The problem now is whether or not there is a good intention to help them,” said dr Sarbini who had just returned from the Gaza Strips in the Middle East a few weeks ago to give medical assistance to Palestinians in the conflict zone in the post Israeli military strike last month.
It was no longer a public secret that the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group often fell victim of torture, discrimination, persecution, repression and murder in the country of their birth and they also had to undergo such treatment in transit country before they were found adrift off the Aceh coast. “Repressed communities like the Muslim Rohingya ethnic group should be helped in a bid to find the best solution through humanitarian approach,” he said.
Sharing dr Sarbini’s view was Dr Djoko Wiyono of the Ukhuwah Jama’ah Muslimin (Hizbullah), a domestic Islamic organization which also symphatized the Muslim Rohingya refugees, saying that some Islamic boarding schools under the management of his organization were ready to accept Rohingya refugees under an assimilation program.
Dr Djoko Wiyono, the head of the Ukhuwah Jama’ah Muslimin (Hizbullah), said on Saturday that Muslim Rohingya refugees left their homeland to avoid repression and persecution by the Myamarese junta, as they were regarded as stateless persons. “Hence, the government should not categorize them as economic migrants,” he said, adding that the assimilation program proposed by MEC-Indonesia was perceived as the only way to find the best solution.
The government should not worry about food and so on, as some Islamic boarding schools had no objection to meet their daily needs during the assimilation program. Deporting Rohingya asylum seekers who were stranded in Aceh Province recently will be perceived as inhuman by a country which fails to understand the problem confronting the Rohingya refugees.
In the meantime, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda could not meet the requests of some organizations proposing for assimilation program for the Rohingya refugees. He stressed that the government is currently making a second stage verification of the 391 refugees who left their homeland for Indonesia or other destinations. “Based on the results of interviews we have conducted with them by inviting translators from our embassy in Yangoon and Dhaka (Bangladesh), it was known that their motivation and departure was to seek better economic life,” he said.
Hassan also said that the government believed there was no political motivation to seek a political asylum in another country. Therefore, he added, based on the first stage of verification the government thought to deport them to their home countries. “But at present we are facing the finalization of the second stage verification in detail in order to arrive at a better decision .”
In further developments, the foreign minister in a recent statement on Feb 6, the government of Indonesia was currently taking diplomatic steps to handle the Muslim Rohingya refugees by intensifying cooperation with international organizations such as the international organization for migrants (IOM), UNHCR and ICRC.
The government of Indonesia is consistent to see the problem as an international issue, the solution of which should involve their homeland, transits and destinations, Wirajuda said. Such diplomatic step taken by Indonesia by asking the government of their homeland to stop the flow of the boat people from leaving their country. Indonesia also asked their country to stop, to reduce the reason regarded as the causes of their fleeing their country.
“Their their homeland should also stop the violation of human rights either in the form of bad treatment of Myanmarese minority group like the Rohingyas, torture during their transit which eventually caused them to go to the sea to save themselves from inhuman treatement,” the minister said.
The refugees ever dropped in on the beach of Myanmar and landed in Thailand. They claimed to have suffered much from torture from the Thai security authorities who also took the refugees into custody and pummeled before being cast adrift in a boat that had been stripped of its engine ran out of fuel, he said. ( ant )