BANGKOK: There were fewer boat people taking to the sea from Myanmar's Rakhine state last winter compared to the previous year - but it is difficult to be certain about the coming weeks.
Mr Mohiuddin Mohamad-Yusof, president of the New York-based World Rohingya Organisation, warned in an e-mail that "200,000 Rohingyas may leave Rakhine state in 2016". So far, however, the estimates by key agencies are more conservative, according toa report by straitstimes.com "It's hard to predict the number of people who could take to boats in the Bay of Bengal in the coming months," Ms Vivian Tan, spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), wrote in an e-mail to The Straits Times. "An estimated 1,000 people have done so since September 2015, far fewer than over the same period last year," she added. "There are reports that smuggling networks and potential travellers are taking a wait-and-see approach in view of recent government crackdowns in the region and the elections in Myanmar. But unless the root causes of the movements are addressed, these boats are unlikely to stop," she said. Solving the problem at its root is a dim prospect when minority Muslim Rohingya continue to be discriminated against in Myanmar. Insistence that they are historically illegal Bengali immigrants from Bangladesh and that "Rohingya" is a term invented for political leverage leaves limited, if any, scope for improvement in the community's situation, even after the National League for Democracy (NLD) forms the next government on Feb 1. State chief ministers are appointed by the President. Until the Nov 8 general election, the chief minister of Rakhine was an army major-general and a Burman who steered a firm middle path between extremists on both sides - Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingya. In Rakhine, the state assembly election was won by the Rakhine Nationalities Party (RNP), which wants one of its own installed as chief minister, which would tilt the political equation against the Rohingya. Hence the warning from Mr Mohamad-Yusof that the number of boat people will increase in the weeks ahead. "The Rakhine (party) was able to win the people's mandate to wipe out the Rohingya as foreigners or illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh by winning the 2015 election," he wrote.-Asfar
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