Global approach to stop people-smuggling

Southeast Asia is on the brink of crisis, with a burgeoning Rohingya and Bangladeshi boatpeople population, while the European Commission estimates a million people on the coast of North African countries have paid people-smugglers for passage and plan to set sail for Europe.

Both regional crises are producing essentially the same response: a new determination to smash illegal people-smuggling operations. The European rhetoric even apes that of the Abbott government in its determination to break the people-smugglers’ business model.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop late last month was a guest at a European members of parliament Friends of Australia meeting. The European politicians there, representing a wide political spectrum, wanted to talk only about Australia’s successful boats policies.

In Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have all recently undertaken boat turn-backs, somewhat along the lines of the Abbott government. The big difference is they have not done so as part of a full-scale, coherent policy working at every point along the people-smuggling chain, and they have not done so with sufficient operational concern for the safety of boatpeople involved.

Bangkok has convened a crisis summit for May 29 to discuss people trafficking. This is not under the auspices of the Bali process and is a clear indication that the Bali process is too wide, and involves too many countries, to be effective.

The Rohingya situation threatens to be Southeast Asia’s biggest immigration crisis since the exodus of the Indochinese boatpeople after the end of the Vietnam War.

They are completely unlike the Iranians, Afghans and even Sri Lankans who were coming to Australia in such large numbers under the Rudd and Gillard governments. These were populations of asylum-seekers coming from outside the region, using Southeast Asian nations as transit countries on their way to their preferred destination of Australia. The Rohingyas coming from Myanmar are a population of boatpeople generated within Southeast Asia and seeking Southeast Asian countries — mainly Malaysia — as destinations.

The Myanmar government does not allow Rohingyas to become Myanmar citizens although some Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations. The Bangladesh government equally does not allow Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to become Bangladesh citizens.

If a serious pipeline of Rohingya migration to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand is established, the Myanmar government could see this as the solution to its Rohingya problems. However, there are nearly 1.5 million Rohingyas in Myanmar, mainly in the coastal Rakhine state.

The Rohingya problem will not be solved by resettlement. No one is willing to resettle 1.5 million Rohingyas. There has to be a Myanmar solution to this problem within an ASEAN context. Perhaps four things should occur. Malaysia could regularise that status of the 40,000-odd Rohingyas already within Malaysia. The US, which has been critical in Myanmar’s emergence into the international community, could encourage its government to improve the lot of Rohingyas within Myanmar. More overseas aid could be mobilised for Myanmar, some part of which can be used to help the Rohingyas. And Myanmar itself must decide that it stands to lose more by persecuting Rohingyas than by making their lives more tolerable.

There are two dangers for Australia in this situation. Australia would like to help, but it should not inject itself into this problem. It should stay far away and relatively quiet. Of course the actions of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand show the hypocrisy of any criticism of Australia’s more humane and comprehensive actions, but the circumstances of those countries are different from ours. Secondly, if Australia resettles any Rohingyas at all, it will inevitably set up an irresistible pull factor that will create a new people-smuggling industry of Rohingyas sailing to Australia.