2015-05-20 10:34:00

Philippines: Church Supports State offer of refuge to stranded Rohingya migrants


(Vatican Radio) The Philippines has signalled it is ready to take in thousands of migrants who are stranded on Asian seas; the first country to offer shelter after its south-east Asian neighbours initially blocked them from entering. The Catholic Church has welcomed the decision and offered its support.  

Manila, a signatory to the United Nation’s refugee convention, said it would help as it denied a local report claiming that the Philippines planned to push back boats carrying some 8,000 people fleeing persecution in Burma and poverty in Bangladesh.

Herminio Coloma, the Minister for Communications and a spokesman for the president, Benigno Aquino, stressed that the Philippines signed the 1951 Convention related to the Status of Refugees, pledging to "provide assistance and relief to people involuntarily displaced from their lands due to conflict. We will continue to do our part to save lives", Coloma stressed, recalling that in the 70s the Philippines already welcomed the Vietnamese "boat people" who fled their country after the Vietnam War.

"Let us not fall short of providing humanitarian relief and assistance that is asked of us, as we pride ourselves to be a compassionate and hospitable people," Senator Paolo Aquino said in a statement issued on Tuesday. "We call on the proper international agencies to process the legal issues immediately for the welfare of the boat people," said Aquino, a cousin and political ally of President Benigno Aquino.

The statement came after Philippine Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Monday that the country has an obligation to admit and protect asylum seekers, even when the refugees do not have documents to prove their status. “If there are boat people who come to us seeking the protection of our government, there is a process, there are existing mechanisms on how to handle these refugees or asylum seekers,” de Lima said in a statement.

The Philippines has a long history of hosting refugees from other Asian countries, and as far as Europe. Apart from the refuge it offered to the Vietnamese ‘boat people’, During World War II, the then Philippine President Manuel Quezon had ordered the admission of 1,500 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Holocaust in Europe. Following the war and the communist victory in the civil war in China, thousands of Chinese refugees also settled in the Philippines.

Fr. Socrates Mesiona, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the Philippines, appreciates the government's position and agrees: "It is our duty to welcome these people: if necessary, we will welcome them and will try to ensure them a decent life. They are human beings and children of God, created in the image and likeness of God. The fact that they are Muslim does not create any problem and does not change the state of things. As the gospel teaches us, we are ready to give them hospitality".

It would be a long and unlikely journey for the migrants – who are believed to be in the region of the Andaman Sea – to make it to the Philippines on their rickety boats with little food and fuel. However, the statement raised hopes for a breakthrough in the crisis in which nearly 3,000 refugees and migrants from Burma’s persecuted Rohingya minority group and Bangladesh were rescued off Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

“It is a hopeful sign. We hope the governments in the region would lift their game as well,” said an International Organisation for Migration spokesman, Joe Lowry. “We have been saying for 10 days now [that the governments should allow migrants to land]. We don’t know how many people have perished now.”

Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have turned away boats, despite the UN’s warning against “floating coffins” in the region’s seas. Authorities in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Bangkok had initially decided to adopt a policy of rejections.

Last week more than 2,500 Bangladeshi and Burmese Rohingya landed on the coasts of the three countries and, according to the latest estimates, there are five thousand still missing in the Andaman Sea, without food or water.

Many Rohingya flee from Myanmar, where they are not granted citizenship and where they are not recognized holders of fundamental rights. Meanwhile Myanmar’s main opposition party, led by the Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has finally broke silence on the issue of the Rohingya saying the Muslims fleeing dire conditions in Burma are entitled to “human rights”.

“If they are not accepted [as citizens], they cannot just be sent on to rivers; can’t be pushed out to sea,” said Nyan Win, a spokesman from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party on Monday. “They are humans. I just see them as humans who are entitled to human rights.”

Malaysia’s foreign affairs minister met his counterparts from Indonesia and Thailand in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday to discuss the migrant crisis, ahead of a regional meeting in Bangkok on 29 May. Malaysia and Indonesia have now abandoned their push-back policy, agreeing to provide temporary shelter to thousands of migrants stranded at sea. The Governments, however, have asked for international help. 

On Tuesday, the Indonesian foreign minister had said her country had already “given more than it should” to help the migrants. “This irregular migration is not the problem of one or two nations. This is a regional problem which also happens in other places. This is also a global problem,” Retno Marsud told reporters after a cabinet meeting at the presidential palace.

(Source: The Guardian, Fides Agency, Al Jazeera)

 








All the contents on this site are copyrighted ©.