THE Palace bullhorns have been busy these past few days, painting a double-sided picture of the response the Philippine government would make should the Rohingya Muslim boat people enter our area of jurisdiction.
Palace Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. first said to the media that the country might turn the refugees back to the sea if they cannot present “travel documents.” He later clarified that the Philippine government can only act in accordance with the United Nations’s (UN) convention on refugees and “stateless” people.
Myanmar has, time and again, refused to recognize the Rohingya Muslim people as its own, forcing them to flee as stateless refugees due to systematic persecution. The same is true with Bangladesh, which refuses to call the Rohingya people as Bangladeshi.
A little over 6,000 Rohingya Muslims recently fled violent persecution from Buddhists in Myanmar toward Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia in boats left abandoned by smugglers and pirates. The UN and, recently, the United States had called on Asian ports to open their doors to the boat people, as many are close to dying or had already died during their trip by sea.
Thousands of these impoverished refugees have yet to be accommodated in Thailand, whose migrant-boat policy includes the giving of food and other supplies, but never to land onshore. Indonesia, on the other hand, had already opened its shores, granting the refugees safe passage, however temporary.
As for the Philippines, the Rohingya boat people are still a long way off, roughly 1,800 kilometers from those in Indonesia and about 2,300 km from those in Thai waters.
Given our history, however, of helping thousands of boat people who fled from Vietnam after the Vietnam War, Malacañang has apparently “milked” the issue for what it’s worth in positive public perception. The Philippines and Thailand were only two among 48 nations that signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948.
In the 1970s the Philippines put up the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan, where the refugees were given temporary shelter, food and supplies until they were repatriated to Vietnam and other host countries, like Canada and the United Kingdom.
The tragic migration of these boat people had led many to question why member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations refused them safe passage. Back home, it has led numerous netizens to ask if the Philippines will continue its historical stance of helping refugees regain a foothold on life.
How all these will pan out remains to be seen. For now, any claim from Malacañang is neither worth gold nor salt until the government has taken solid steps to help the Rohingya people.
And why rock the boat of public perception by speaking ahead of the Rohingya’s arrival to our shores? The Philippine government can even now fund a rescue mission to these boats. Action always speaks louder than words.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano
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