Nowhere to Go

Nowhere to Go

   The refugee crisis is something I've also written about earlier in the posts Refuge and later, Disappearing.  But as with the earlier pieces on vitamins and hunger, this is another continuing crisis that seems to remain, and fester, and be something that for most of the world, we thought was taken care of.  But the situation is far from over, leading Time to write a piece called The Nowhere People, by Hannah Beech.

   This time, the refugees were from Burma, and here's how the story began: The creaking vessel’s hold was retrofitted by human smugglers to carry more than 400 people packed so tightly together, they often sat with their arms cradling their bent knees.  Twice-daily meals were limited to a handful of gruel and a few gulps of water.  A couple of months into the trip, the captain and other gun-wielding traffickers abandoned ship, leaving the passengers to their fates.  Food–even grains of uncooked rice–ran out...Then began what one International Organization for Migration official described as “maritime ping-pong with human life.”  Eager to make landfall in Malaysia, the migrants–a mix of ethnic Rohingya from Burma escaping persecution and Bangladeshis fleeing poverty–headed toward the jungle-choked coastline.  But the Malaysian maritime force, under government orders to refuse such boats shelter, pushed the vessel north toward Thailand.  The Thai authorities fixed the boat’s engine and tossed some food and water to the passengers, who by this point were drinking their own urine.  But they then towed the boat back to international waters, wanting nothing to do with the despondent human cargo.  The cycle repeated itself: back to Malaysia, back to Thailand, back to Malaysia.  Eventually an Indonesian helicopter hovered overhead, though that country’s navy initially blocked the boat as well.  Three countries were rejecting a trawler filled with starving, dehydrated people, a floating human-rights tragedy.

   So who are the Rohingya?  They are a people described by the article as: A Muslim ethnic minority that lives in the west of Burma, known officially as Myanmar, the Rohingya are not simply poor and persecuted by members of the country’s Buddhist majority.  They also lack the most fundamental measure of identity: citizenship.  About 140,000 Rohingya have been herded by the government into fetid, disease-ridden camps since sectarian tensions with local Buddhists erupted in 2012.   That violence, which disproportionately affected the Rohingya, culminated in what Human Rights Watch deemed “ethnic cleansing.”  Visiting one such ghetto, a U.N. humanitarian-affairs official said she witnessed a level of suffering “I have personally never seen before.”

   Their numbers are already swelling to nearly 100,000 (those trying to escape) in the past year, adding to the nearly 800,000 fleeing Asia overall.  And what's striking, whether the fleeing is happening in Sudan or Libya or Syria or Myramar,  this is now a business (read how the Australian government alledgedly paid off some of the human smugglers in my earlier post).  Traffikers deal in drugs, guns, sex and people...any "commodity" that will make them money.  Says the article, “These trafficking syndicates have operated for years,” says Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights, a human-rights-focused NGO based in Bangkok. “But the current scale of death and abuse is unprecedented.”

   One must remember that these people fleeing, are at their limit...often facing death, or starvation, or beatings or rape; poor and famished in more ways than one, they often sacrifice many so that one --and perhaps only one-- can escape.  Somehow, they manage to scrape together enough money to pay a smuggler, then hope against hope that the smuggler follows through and actually helps that person (often, this isn't the case).   For those left behind, there is little future, little hope, perhaps the only glimmer of light being an early death freeing them from this so-called life. And for those who do manage to make it to a boat, the risks are multiplied.  Many cannot swim, which becomes an issue when the overloaded boat begins to leak or take on water.  And then more smugglers may arrive.  Here's how one refugee described it in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek titled "Dying At Europe's Doorstep" by Brad Wieners:  “We were maybe one hour from shore when another boat came and demanded more money from us, and then began shooting at us,” Kazkji says.  It was dark—and impossible to tell if the assailants were the same smugglers who sent them off or a rival gang.  “You put your head in your arms and hope the bullet doesn’t find you,” he says.  He recalls a woman who held a small child aloft as an appeal for mercy.  “She puts her boy out and says, ‘Look at my small boy, I don’t want to die with my boy.  Please don’t shoot the boat.’  They understand the language, and still they start to shoot.”

   It's difficult to imagine, 40 hours crammed in an overloaded boat, heading to what you hope will be a better place, a country that will give you a chance at a better life, a chance to raise your child without a fear of hunger or bullets.  How desperate would you have to be to risk it all, to bring your baby along, knowing that once pushed away from shore, you may be facing death on the open sea?  From thirst, from exposure, from other smugglers demanding even more?  How many of the people getting into that boat have even seen the ocean before?  And if you're the countries receiving them and rescuing them, how do you (or when do you) say "enough?"  You can't save them all seems to make more and more sense as the numbers keep arriving, thousands and thousands of all ages, from babies to grown men; but in your hearts, how do you close the door and turn away?  Do you, as one country proposed, take the refugees and then destroy the boats so they can't be used again?  Do you destroy the boats before they even leave the shores?  Do you push the boats away to another country?   Do you just leave everything up to fate?  For one person, these questions were all overridden by just one thought...get the people to safety and worry about the rest later.  Good sentiment, but once dropped off on Italian or Australian or Sicilian shores, then what?  How do you house, protect and feed so many hundreds of thousands of people...and more are coming.

   It is all a much more complicated, convoluted subject that is far from "taken care of."  The next post will hope to continue this difficult and humanitarian issue, one even Pope Francis is talking about.  Perhaps one will need to step further back and look at the beginning of it all...what is causing such widespread religious and ethnic conflict, and why now?  And who is funding the violence?