Letter to minister of Labour (Thailand)
HEADLINES
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NEWS ON MIGRANTS
Burmese patients continue to flock to Mae Tao Clinic
Letter to the Minister of Labour, Thailand (from MWG)
NEWS ON REFUGEES
MYANMAR: Cyclone-affected fishermen still need help
Rakhine Refugees Suffer Discrimination in Bangladesh
Two Australians visit Burmese refugee camps
Update: TBBC & UNHCR Border Map & Populations (October 2009)
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NEWS ON MIGRANTS
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Burmese patients continue to flock to Mae Tao Clinic
Wed 11 Nov 2009, Asah
The Mae Tao clinic, which is located in Mae Sot, on the Thai side of the Thai–Burma border, has continued to attract thousands of ill and injured Burmese people not only with its close proximity to Burmese villages, but with its policy of treating migrants and refugees for little or no patient cost.
“This month [many] Mataotalay villagers from Myawaddy Township in Karen State have gotten the fever,” one Myawaddy resident reported. “Many of the people went to the Mea Tao Clinic because they do not have to pay for medicine. We can give donations as charity, but if we go to other clinic we have to pay 4,000 to 5,000 baht.”
A student studying in Myawaddy explained, “If my eye gets hurt, I can go to the Mea Toa [clinic] very easily and get it fixed. But I have to pay an admission fee of 100 baht; once there the cure is free and also it is very close to my native town Myawaddy.”
Many people who live along the Thai-Burma border are from inside Burma. While most of them are refugees, some are also migrants to the area to find work. For this population that often does not have the resources to visit a larger Thai clinic, when sick the majority of patients can find treatment at the Mae Tao clinic according to the Burmese patient who had come from Burma but has been living in Mae Sot.
For Burmese not already living in Mae Sot, the crossing from Burma is relatively easy. “If a person is sick in Myawaddy, they can cross the border to receive treatment at the Mea Tao Clinic. Some people cross the bridge, while some cross the river [illegally] by boat,” a Burmese Mae Sot resident explained. “If we cross Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge legally, we have to pay 2500 kyat on the Burmese side if we have never crossed before and 1000 kyat if we have crossed before.”
According to Saw Aung Than Wai, who is a program manager and research coordinator for the clinic, Mea Tao normally sees around 300 to 400 patients per day. 50% of these came from the Burmese side of the border.
“I believed that many of services at Mae Tao are unavailable to patients in Burma so patients came to seek treatment here,” said Saw Aung Than Wai. “A few weeks ago we performed eye operations on about 180 patients. 80% of them were from inside Burma and specifically came to undergo the operation. And the whole process was free. The most common condition people come seeking treatment for is fever and the second most common is respiratory illness.”
The clinic receives support and funding from 20 to 30 international and non-governmentally organized groups. “We can get support but we do not get all that we need. Dr. Cynthia Maung continues to work towards keeping the clinic running in the future, and to adapt to the changing needs of patients.”
Mea Tao Clinic was founded along the Thai-Burma border in 1989 after Dr. Cynthia Maung and 14 colleges fled Burma when the Burmese military began violently suppressing the 1988 democracy uprising.
http://www.monnews-imna.com/newsupdate.php?ID=1590
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Letter to the Minister of Labour, Thailand (from MWG)
(Attached file with PDF format)
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NEWS ON REFUGEES
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MYANMAR: Cyclone-affected fishermen still need help
THANDAIT, 10 November 2009 (IRIN)
Before the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, Cho Tuu, 30, never found it hard to make ends meet, but these days he struggles to feed his family.
Without any fishing equipment, Cho Tuu is forced to pay the equivalent of US$15 per month to hire a boat, and to hand over three-quarters of his catch to the owner of the fishing net that he rents.
“Some months, I can barely make enough money to even pay for hiring the boat,” said the father of two school-age children from his makeshift hut in Thandait village in the Ayeyarwady Delta, the area worst hit by Nargis.
Though Cho Tuu has been expecting fishing equipment from humanitarian agencies for more than 17 months, no assistance has come yet.
Like Cho Tuu, officials say thousands of fishermen are still unable to restore their livelihoods because of a lack of aid following Cyclone Nargis, which left nearly 140,000 people dead or missing, and 2.4 million affected.
After paddy planting, fishing is the second largest source of income for households in the Ayeyarwady Delta, a labyrinth of rivers, ponds and waterways.
For 20 percent of Nargis-affected households, full-time fishing is the primary source of income, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Myanmar.
Tesfai Ghermazien, the FAO’s senior emergency and rehabilitation coordinator in Myanmar, said it would take 3-5 years to fully restore the livelihoods of cyclone-affected fishermen.
“Very few [fishermen], if any, are back to normal,” Ghermazien told IRIN.
Although the main sources of livelihood in the Delta are farming, fish and livestock, these sub-sectors were the least funded in the Cyclone Nargis response, he said.
According to the FAO, 1,550 marine fishing vessels, 50 percent of small inland fishing boats (i.e. about 100,000 out of 200,000), and 70 percent of fishing gear were destroyed by Nargis.
ASEAN review
A review of recovery efforts by the Myanmar government, the UN, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) released in July this year found that livelihoods remain insecure in the worst-affected townships of Ayeyarwady and Yangon divisions.
It said that the townships of Bogale, Labutta, Mawlamyinegyun and Pyapon in the delta’s south – where fishing is the predominant income source – had experienced the highest percentage of losses of fishing gear.
However, on average, only 6 percent of surveyed households in these four townships reported receiving fishing gear as a relief item. Only 11 percent of the surveyed households reported receiving boats, although 33 percent of them said they considered a boat as a pressing need to restore their livelihood activity, said the review.
A third Post-Nargis Periodic Review is expected at the end of 2009.
Equipment lacking
In an effort to help cyclone-affected fishermen restore their livelihoods, FAO and its cooperating agencies have distributed about 5,000 boats, and some 130,000 sets of different types of fishing gear, mainly nets and traps.
The Department of Fisheries has also distributed over 10,000 boats with nets and gear.
Before the end of the year, FAO plans to hand over 200 boats which are expected to have a longer life than most common boats now being built. It will also distribute a few thousand boats next year.
In the meantime, though, most cyclone-affected fishermen complain that they still do not have enough equipment.
“There are 154 fishermen in our fishing village, most of whom lost their fishing gear in the cyclone,” said Aung Myo, the head of Thandait Village. “But, so far we just got 14 fishing boats and gear.”
Besides being forced to hire equipment or take out loans to buy gear, fishermen have complained of the burden of paying for boats distributed by the government, said Aung Myo.
He said the cost of the fishing boat and gear – nearly the equivalent of US$360 – had to be paid back in four installments.
Other complaints include those about the equipment distributed. Some say the nets they received were inappropriate – those who fish in rivers were given nets for sea fishing, and vice-versa. Some boats distributed have also been found wanting.
“The fishing boat I received was quite small,” said Tint Swe, 42, who received a fishing boat from the Department of Fisheries on an installation system.
Tint Swe, who lost two motorized boats during Nargis, said he had been forced to spend additional money to modify the boat to his requirements.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86961
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Rakhine Refugees Suffer Discrimination in Bangladesh
By ALEX ELLGEE Wednesday, November 11, 2009
COX’S BAZAAR, Bangladesh – Since the Burmese military regime came to power in 1988, refugees have poured over the Naf River from Arakan State to seek asylum in neighboring Bangladesh. The majority of these refugees have been Rohingya Muslims who human rights groups argue are fleeing ethnic cleansing by the ruling State Peace and Development Council.
However, the Rohingya are not the only ethnic people in Arakan State fleeing persecution from the Burmese government and its armed forces; thousands of Arakanese Buddhists, commonly called Rakhine, have also fled to Bangladesh where their plight has largely been forgotten by the international community.
“We get very little assistance and, when we do, it usually ends up being hard to receive and full of complications,” said Thant Sin who, like everyone The Irrawaddy spoke to in interviews for this article, requested to use a false name.
A student organizer during the 1996 uprising in Sittwe, Thant Sin knew that if he remained in Burma and was caught by the security forces, he would have received a lengthy prison sentence. He escaped, hiking through the jungle for 15 days not knowing what he would do when he reached Bangladesh.
“I didn’t know anything about Bangladesh or what I would do there, but I knew I had to escape,” he said.
Thant Sin has registered with the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, and has received a UN identity card, which states in English and Bengali that the holder should not be forcefully repatriated to Burma. However, he said he does not feel much safer because of numerous reported incidents of Bangladeshi police ripping up Rakhine refugees’ cards and forcing them to pay bribes.
Bangladesh has not acceded to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, leaving all the country’s refugees in a legal limbo and lacking protection.
Thant Sin expressed a common belief among Buddhist refugees in Bangladesh that the Bangladeshi authorities are not prepared to help them because of their religion.
“If we were Muslims it would be different. We would be allowed to go into the camps and benefit from the assistance and security they receive,” he explained. “There’s no difference between us—we’re all refugees who have left Burma because of oppression and forced labor. Why can’t we be treated the same?”
Rakhine refugees are processed differently from the Rohingya and are granted “urban refugee” status. Their office of contact is in Dhaka, some 370 km [230 miles] from Cox’s Bazaar, and they complain this is too far for them to travel, with their transport costs seldom refunded.
The UNHCR used to provide Rakhine refugees with a small allowance, but this has been discontinued, except in special cases.
Arjun Jain, the senior protection officer for the UNHCR in Dhaka, told The Irrawaddy that the agency is trying to build the confidence of the refugees so they can become more self-reliant.
“We have stopped giving out as many allowances as we did before, because we saw this wasn’t effective,” he said. “We feel it’s important to develop the capacity of the refugees so they don’t feel dependent on the UNHCR.”
However, Thant Sin said that it’s impossible for the Rakhine—the largest ethnic group in Arakan State— to make a living or open a business in Bangladesh because locals “won’t buy from an Arakanese shop.
“Nor can we get work permits,” he added.
One family told The Irrawaddy how they had opened a grocery store a couple of years ago with a grant from the UNHCR. Six months later, they had to close the store because none of the locals would shop there, despite it having the lowest prices in the area.
Relations with the locals are a major concern for the Rakhine refugees. Often the Arakanese try to conceal their Burmese origins, but have problems with the Bengali language. Most of the long-term refugees pretend to be Bangladeshi Rakhine in order to avoid abuse from the locals who see Burmese refugees as a heavy burden on their underdeveloped country’s economy.
Even Buddhist monks from Arakan State are not immune to abuse. “When we walk past, they shout ‘Barmajar’ at us, labeling us refugees from Burma,” Ashin Thawbanar , a monk leader during the Saffron Revolution, told The Irrawaddy from his monastery in Cox’s Bazaar.
“When we are collecting our morning alms and we hear them shouting that, we feel threatened and humiliated,” he said.
Ashin Thawbanar spent months in hiding from the Burmese authorities after the monk-led uprising was violently put down by Burma’s security forces in 2007. Feeling he had run out of places to go, he was forced to seek refuge in Bangladesh.
However, when he applied to the UNHCR in Dhaka his case was rejected on the grounds that some criteria were not met in the interview.
He told The Irrawaddy that the UN interviewer questioned how he was able to flee Burma if indeed security was so tight.
He was left in Bangladesh without any assistance and, most importantly, without a UN card which he feels is necessary to travel safely and receive alms—the food a Buddhist monk survives on.
“We hear stories of ‘urban refugees’ being arrested by the police for no reason,” he said. “I heard of one man who was killed because he was Burmese. It makes us afraid every time we go outside.”
He said that he appealed against the UN decision in March but still hasn’t received anything, not even a letter from the UNHCR to confirm they had received his claim.
“I’ve given up hoping for anything. I can’t go back to Burma and I can’t leave Bangladesh. I’m stuck here,” he said.
Some refugees The Irrawaddy spoke to claim the UNHCR currently has close to a 100 percent rejection rate toward Rakhine refugees, and believe the agency is trying to keep numbers down to avoid upsetting the Bangladeshi government.
Nay Htoo, an economics student from Sittwe, was in his final year of university when he and four friends participated in the “Vote No” campaign against the 2008 constitutional referendum. Following a crackdown on university students he fled to Bangladesh to escape Burmese military intelligence.
Having applied to be recognized as a UN refugee, he was surprised to find out that only one of the people in his group had been accepted and the rest rejected.
“I don’t really understand how that is possible,” he said. “We all came together and had the same story, but they said three of us were not telling the truth.”
The UNHCR’s Arjun Jain told The Irrawaddy that rejections had increased in the last year and suggested that some of the refugees were being tutored what to say before their interviews. He said that all decisions are made “exceptionally carefully” and that they re-open cases if they believe a mistake has been made.
For the refugees who are accepted, very few families have been allowed to resettle in third countries. Desperate to leave Bangladesh, three Rakhine families held a hunger strike outside the UNHCR Dhaka office in October, demanding a response to their resettlement interview.
The families said they were invited by UNHCR for resettlement interviews two years before at the Cox’s Bazaar office, however never heard anything further, and when they requested information they were told that their interview documents had been lost.
“We travelled to Dhaka to show our displeasure that they lost our interview documents and demand action be taken,” one of the family members told The Irrawaddy.
She said she fled to Bangladesh with her family having worked on a forced labor camp in Arakan State for two years. With ailing health and insufficient money to pay off the Burmese authorities to exempt her from the work camp she felt she had to escape.
“We are suffering so much in Bangladesh,” she said. “We can’t earn enough money to survive and we all have medical problems which aren’t being properly dealt with.”
In the meantime, the UNHCR has taken over from a local NGO in looking after the “urban refugees.” It says it will be stepping up assistance to them.
However, few if any Rakhine refugees in Cox’s Bazaar expect their lot to get better in Bangladesh.
http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17192&page=2
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Two Australians visit Burmese refugee camps
Teknaf, Bangladesh
Two Australians from Dhaka along with Saber Azam, the country representative of the UNHCR in Dhaka and Teknaf Union Nirbahi Officer (UNO) visited Burmese refugee camps yesterday, said a refugee committee member from the Nayapara camp.
They visited the Kutupalong official camp and unofficial camp at about 10 am and visited Nayapara camp after 12:30 pm.
They first visited the Kutupalong official and unofficial camps in the morning. They only met the Camp-in-Charge and watched the situation in the camp. Later, they observed the situation at the unofficial camp near the Kutupalong official camp. They talked to one unofficial refugee and asked him the situation of the camp and what they did about procuring food, said a refugee leader from Kutupalong camp.
Later, they left the Nayapara camp after visiting the Kutupalong camp. After arrival at the Nayapara camp, they entered the camp through Gate No. 2 and exited from Gate No. 1, after observing the situation in the camp. They inspected the Computer Center, and RTM (Research Training and Management) international clinic where they visited the refugee stabbed by local goons. They also checked new sheds of the camp, said another refugee from Nayapara camp.
They left from the camp at about 2:30 pm.
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Update: TBBC & UNHCR Border Map & Populations (October 2009)
http://tbbc.org/camps/2009-10-oct-map-tbbc-unhcr.pdf
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http://www.monnews-imna.com/burmese/newsupdate.php?ID=512
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11/12/2009
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?????????????????????????? ????????? ?????????????????????????? ????????????? ????? ????????? ??????????
http://www.narinjara.com/detailsbur.asp?id=2163
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09 November 2009
????????? ???????????? (Bangladesh) ???????????? ??????????? ??????????????? ????????????????? ??????????????????? ?? ???????????? ????????? ????????????? ??????????? ??????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????? ? ?????????????????? ??????????? ??????? ????????????????????? ??????????? ???????? ???????????? ???????? ????????????????????????? ????????????????? ??????????????????? ????????? ?????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????? ???????????? ????????????? ????????????? (Cox’s Bazar) ???? ???????????? ??????????????? ??????????????? ????????????????? ??????????????
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http://www.voanews.com/burmese/2009-11-09-voa6.cfm
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