KUALA SELANGOR, June 6 — The Rohingya community here should go back to Myanmar and fight for their rights instead of living in Malaysia like “cowards”, a PAS delegate said today.
Bagan delegate Mohd Yusof Zaidi said that Malaysia cannot accept refugees and asylum seekers coming from all over the world, as they have allegedly caused many existing problems here.
“We will plunge into many (negative) issues from this refugee dumpings.
“If we keep accepting all of them (Rohingyas), then the Vietnamese will come, then the Cambodians, and even the Americans, and we will find ourselves as the dumping ground for refugees,” he said.
Yusof said that the root of the problem is the Burmese government and that the Rohingyas in Malaysia must address this instead of running away.
“Find ways to stop the violence... start with Burma and if need, we ask those here to leave their families to go back to fight their government.
“Why are they being cowards by staying here?” he asked.
Malaysia is one of the main destinations for ethnic Rohingya fleeing oppression and violence in Myanmar, with more fleeing their state-sanctioned persecution in search of a better land.
Over 1,000 Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya refugees landed in Langkawi on May 10 and were subsequently sent to the Belantik detention centre in Kedah.
Migrant activists estimate that some 8,000 Bangladeshi and Rohingya remain stranded at sea after people smugglers abandoned ship following a Thai crackdown on human trafficking.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement on May 8 that some 25,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshis boarded smugglers’ boats between January and March this year, almost double the number over the same period last year.
Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have been turning away boats of migrants back out to sea as the International Organisation of Migration reportedly criticised the Southeast Asian nations for playing “maritime ping-pong” with people’s lives.
