Sea-faring migrants from Bangladesh and Burmese Rohingya are arriving in large numbers on the shores of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. At present, there may be as many as 8,000 migrants stuck at sea, causing the United Nations to warn of a potential humanitarian crisis.
The three Southeast Asian nations have received at least 1,500 migrants over the past week. The crisis escalated such that Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand are turning migrants away. Many of the boats contain hundreds of migrants each and possess limited fuel and resources. Whether migrants are fleeing their countries for economic reasons or due to persecution, the immediate danger of leaving them on the boats must be addressed and quickly.
Since January 2015, the United Nations estimates that 25,000 Burmese Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants have fled their respective countries. This is twice the number of migrants that arrived in that same time frame in 2014. Such large populations of migrants are often at risk of becoming, or already are, victims of human trafficking.
Increasing levels of migration to Indonesia and Malaysia may be the direct result of traffickers avoiding Thailand after a recent crackdown on human trafficking, but most of the migration is likely the result of persecution and political instability in Burma.
In response to its designation as Tier 3 in the State Department’s 2014 Trafficking in Person report and increasing levels of sea-faring migrants arriving on its shores, Thailand passed a series of anti-trafficking laws that increased penalties for traffickers and improved monitoring of the fishing industry, among other reforms. Thailand’s crackdown comes ahead of the release of the 2015 Trafficking in Persons report in June and on the heels of a severe human trafficking situation in Benjina, Indonesia, where Thai ships were implicated. Thailand is typically the first destination for sea-faring migrants, but since the crackdown, many traffickers have diverted to neighboring Southeast Asian nations or abandoned ships for fear of prosecution.
Burmese Rohingya are particularly vulnerable to human trafficking due to their tenuous legal status in Burma. The majority of Rohingya living in Burma today were born there, but a discriminatory citizenship law prohibits them from enjoying the legal privileges of citizenship. An estimated 1.3 million Rohingya live in Burma. Of that population, 140,000 are estimated to be displaced, many living in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh. More than 200 Rohingya have died since violence broke out in 2012.
The international community has called upon Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia to help the sea-faring migrants, noting that countries have a moral imperative and possibly even a legal obligation to provide assistance. The U.S. should encourage Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia to shore up their anti-trafficking efforts, but Washington should also acknowledge and seek to address the root cause of this mass migration: unrest in Burma.
