At the end of March, a delegation of Members of Parliament from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore including MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok and MP for Permatang Pauh Datin Seri Dr. Wan Azizah went to the Thai-Burma border to visit Mae La refugee camp and meet with some of those who have been forced to flee the abuses and the ravages of civil war in Burma.
For more than fifty years, civil war has cast its dark shadow on this beautiful country. In the course of the past ten years, about 3,000 villages have been destroyed in eastern parts of the country and hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee. Burma is now the third largest producer of refugees in the world, after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thailand has received the largest number of refugees and migrants from Burma. But an increasing number of Burmese are also coming to Malaysia. At the end of March, a seven year old girl, Dally, went missing in Cheras on the eve of the day she and her family were to leave for resettlement in the U.S.
Malaysia and other governments in ASEAN must take responsibility for the protection of refugees from Burma. They share in the blame for having allowed the situation to drag on for so many decades.
The Malaysian Parliamentary Caucus on Myanmar calls on the Malaysian government to ensure that the authorities act promptly in the murder of Dally and to adopt policies and practices that will ensure that future crimes, not only of this nature, towards unprotected refugee children do not recur.
However, we all know that the root causes of the refugee and migration problems from Burma lies with the Burmese regime. If the junta does not stop its abuses, end the civil war and solves the country’s political and economic problems, refugees will continue to flee the country.
If we are to provide lasting protection to the people of Burma, this tragedy cannot be allowed to continue. We call on the Malaysian government to plan an active role in order for ASEAN to take strong steps at a regional and international level to stop the abuses that are forcing people to flee their homes and that are splitting up families. Continue reading “Democratisation in Burma – sanctions mechanism in new ASEAN Charter”