UN rights chief urges Southeast Asian countries to protect migrants News
UN rights chief urges Southeast Asian countries to protect migrants

[JURIST] The UN human rights chief on Friday urged [press release] Southeast Asian governments to take action to protect the lives of migrants in difficult maritime situations and not turn away incoming migrant boats. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein [official profile] said that he is “appalled” at reports of these countries pushing these boats back out to sea, leading to many “avoidable deaths.” Although Zeid did commend Indonesia and Malaysia for disembarking 582 and 1,018 people, respectively, last weekend, he said that the policy of “pushbacks” was both “incomprehensible and inhumane.” He noted:

Governments in South-East Asia need to respond to this crisis from the premise that migrants, regardless of their legal status, how they arrive at borders, or where they come from, are people with rights that must be upheld. Criminalising such vulnerable people, including children, and placing them in detention is not the solution.

It is believed that approximately 6,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants remain stranded at sea. In discussing the root causes of the problem, Zeid stressed the serious human rights situation in Myanmar. “Until the Myanmar Government addresses the institutional discrimination against the Rohingya population, including equal access to citizenship, this precarious migration will continue,” he said.

Mass migrations have been occurring in Europe as well as Southeast Asia. Refuges from the conflicts in the Africa and the Middle East have generated a tremendous humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean with hundreds of deaths in recent months. In April top UN human rights officials and the International Organization for Migration issued a joint statement [JURIST report] calling on the EU to create a new rescue operation program for migrants attempting to traverse the Mediterranean and to commit to greater receipt of refugees. Also in April UN rights experts warned [JURIST report] the EU that repression of irregular migration cannot be the only solution to the recurrent grave problem of masses of people drowning at sea. In February Amnesty International criticized [JURIST report] the EU’s failure to prevent migrant casualties at sea. The statement came amid reports that as many as 300 migrants had died off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa.