‘Progressives’ badger Japan on the Rohingya issue

Poor Japan, one of the few countries* left in the world that wants to maintain its unique culture and strictly control immigration and its borders, is now constantly under attack by groups supposedly motivated by pure humanitarian concerns.   I say supposed because I believe these are really far left ‘progressives’  and elitists who ultimately seek a borderless world.   Here is the latest assault, posted on the Rohingya Info Corner:

(Tokyo) – Japan’s new administration should protect Burmese Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan and press Burma to end abuses against the minority group, eight Japanese and international organizations said today. The groups sent a joint letter to the newly inaugurated justice minister, Keiko Chiba, and foreign minister, Katsuya Okada.

“Tokyo’s silence sends a message to Burma’s generals that their horrendous persecution of the Rohingya can continue,” said Kanae Doi, Tokyo director at Human Rights Watch. “Japan’s new government should urgently review its policies to protect the Rohingya both in Japan and in Burma.”

Apparently there are 110 Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan wanting refugee status.  This letter says they arrived in Japan by air.  Now, how on earth did abjectly poor Rohingya Muslims get the airfare money to get to Japan?  And, don’t you just love the phrase “made their way!”  Could this have been a set-up?   I don’t doubt that for a minute.

The organizations urged Chiba to rescind deportation orders that would return asylum seekers to Burma and to grant Special Residential Permits to Rohingya in Japan. Over the past decade, more than 110 Rohingya have made their way to Japan, mainly by air, and petitioned the Japanese government for asylum. While there have been no reports of forcible repatriation of Rohingya asylum seekers to Burma, many Rohingya in Japan have been denied refugee status, detained, and issued deportation orders.

Here are the ‘progressive’ groups planning action in Tokyo today:

The letter was signed by Amnesty International Japan, Arakan Rohingya Organization-Japan (JARO), and the Lawyers’ Group for Burmese Refugee Applicants, the Burmese Rohingya Association in Japan, the Christian Coalition for Refugee and Migrant Workers (CCRMW), the People’s Forum on Burma, BurmaInfo, and Human Rights Watch.

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The eight organizations will hold a public event today in Tokyo around the report and the treatment of Rohingya asylum seekers in Japan.

Progressives use buzz words like ’social justice’ which we are learning is code for far left political organizing.  I wanted to find out more about this group Christian Coalition for Refugee and Migrant Workers (CCRMW) and couldn’t find much except a tiny mention of them as a ‘progressive’ Christian group.  I then did come across the wikipedia definition of  Progressive Christianity which I found interesting, and I believe you will too when you think about the ranting of Obama’s Marxist pastor, Rev. Wright.  Liberation theology, according to this article, is one of the streams of religious thought that led to Progressive Christianity.

If you would like to see more posts on how Japan is being badgered, just use our search function for ‘Japan.’

* I reported yesterday that France is now belatedly trying to recover its French culture after being swamped by immigrant Muslim cultures for decades.

Indonesia: We’ve had it with all these asylum seekers

The Indonesian government is making it very clear they cannot afford to keep all the illegal aliens (aka asylum seekers) landing on their shores or being apprehended in their waters.   They want the UN and Australia to do something about it. 

Meanwhile, remember all those Muslim Rohingya boatmen that brought worldwide attention when the Thai government was accused of towing their boats back to sea, those who landed in Indonesia have been given refugee status by the UNHCR and are ready for resettlement in the West.

From the Jakarta Post:

The government said Thursday it would demand a time line of how long the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, on board an Australian vessel in Riau province, would stay in Indonesia once their statuses have been finalized.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said Indonesia could not afford to let the boat people, who wish to go to Australia, stay in its territory for an indefinite period of time, as has been the case in the past.

“What would we do to them if they are not classified as refugees? And what would we do if they are? This has to be clear.”

Indonesia is struggling to cope with the rising number of illegal immigrants intercepted in its waters while making the perilous journey to its more prosperous southern neighbor.

The 78 Sri Lankans are only one group of people currently seeking asylum in Australia.

Another 255 Sri Lankans are refusing to get off a wooden boat at Merak Port, Banten, and their status remains unclear.

Reports in Australia have cited 66 incidents of interception in Indonesian waters this year, resulting in arrests of 1,642 illegal immigrants bound for Australia.

Many have become stateless, living in immigration detention facilities or shelters run by the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar who were found adrift off the coast of Aceh early this year were granted refugee status by the UNHCR, but have not yet been sent to any third countries willing to accept them. Dozens have reportedly escaped from their facilities.

Sounds like a few have other motives than a chance at a good life in the West.

By the way, Indonesia is a Muslim country.  I thought the UN High Commissioner for Refugees told us that Muslims welcome the stranger!

Comment worth noting: Rohingya Muslims are arriving in the US

I’ve been writing about Rohingya Muslims since I first came across an article in Time magazine that said this:

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

I posted on it almost two years ago here.   I was told we didn’t take Rohingya Muslims as part of our refugee resettlement program at that time, but now we do.  Thanks to commenter, “Knowing,” my fears have been confirmed.  Here is his/her comment and my response at this post.

They are included in the Burmese allotment that the US takes. However, it’s no secret to the US or the VOLAGS when they come. In the group of people from Burma we take are Karen (Protestant, Animist and Buddhist), Karenni (mostly Catholic, Hindu and Buddhist), Chin (Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist), Ethnic Burmese (very few right now, generally Buddhist) and Rohingya (Muslim).

So when we say we’re taking Burmese that’s really an umbrella term meaning to resettle several persecuted ethnic groups.

This is my response:

Knowing, It may not be a secret to the State Department and the volags but I know for a fact that resettlement agencies tell local people that the “Burmese are Christians.” One more little deception for the local yokels,eh. I want to scream.

Last night I was telling a reader that my driving force in writing this blog is that I believe in the principle of good government. How dare big brother arrive in local communities and lie to people. Damn it, if refugee resettlement is good for communities then all the facts should be put on the table and let the local people decide what is good for their community!

Visit our Rohingya Reports category for lots more confirmation about why this is a huge mistake.

Update moments later from “Knowing:”

Well I guess someone could be trying to pass them off as Christians but with the exception of the Nepali/Bhutanese the majority of people resettled at the moment are Muslim. So one would truly have to be a yokel to buy in to that.

A word to yokels: the internet is a vast wonderland of information.

We have started resettling Rohingya Muslims!

The other day commenter ‘Knowing’ responding to this post, told us we have started to resettle Rohingya Muslim refugees from camps in Bangladesh—supposedly all women. Note on page 27 of the Obama Administration’s Report to Congress here, it says more will be coming soon—officially coming.

Note in this post in December 2008, another commenter had indicated that unofficially Rohingya were already here.

So, if you are living in a community receiving lots of Burmese refugees, don’t let the volags get away with telling you they are all Christians!

Rohingya Update: Muslim Bangladesh pushes Rohingya Muslims back across the border; meanwhile Burma builds a fence

No Muslim charity here.  From the Irrawaddy:

Bangladeshi authorities have increasingly cracked down on Rohingya refugees living illegally in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar* District in Bangladesh and pushed them back across the Burmese border, according to border sources.

Chris Lewa, coordinator of the Arakan Project, said, “At least 1,200 people have been deported to Burma since January, according to our research, and 190 people were deported in two weeks alone this month.”

Speaking to The Irrawaddy, Tin Soe, editor for the Bangladesh-based Kaladan Press Network, said: “I am not sure what the authorities are doing now. They have been arresting and deporting people almost every day this month.”

About 400,000 unregistered Rohingya refugees are living in two camps near Cox’s Bazaar, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Lewa believes Bangladesh authorities will push back all Rohingya refugees who are not registered with the UNHCR before Burma finishes erecting the wire fence on its border.

I think its ironic that Bangladesh is worried about environmental destruction from so many refugees, while we (the Leftwing anyway) in the US don’t give it a thought when discussing immigration policy!

Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said Rohingya refugees are a heavy burden economically, socially, environmentally on Bangladesh. The Bangladesh government wants to finalize the repatriation of refugees as soon as possible. 

I first told you about Muslim extremists at Cox’s Bazaar here, in my first post in our Rohingya Reports category.  It’s only a matter of time before Rohingya will be coming to your town.

Thousands of Rohingya held in Saudi jails?

Here is a report that is pretty shocking, if it’s true (I don’t know this website).  Regular readers know that I continually question why rich Muslim countries with much ballyhooed Muslim charity virtually never resettle Muslim refugees, so I was shocked to read this.  Apparently at one point Saudi Arabia did take some refugees, but now those same refugees are languishing in Saudi prisons.  So where is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, where is the outrage?

They have been described as some of the world’s most persecuted refugees, and among the most forgotten, too. During my imprisonment in Jeddah I saw and met hundreds of inmates from Burma.

Thousands of Burmese Muslims from Arakan—often called Rohingyas—were offered a safe haven in Saudi Arabia by the late King Faisal, but with the change in monarch the rules changed too. What was to have been a permanent abode of peace for these uprooted people has now turned into a chamber of horrors.

There are about 3,000 families of Burmese Muslims in Mecca and Jeddah prisons awaiting deportation. Women and children are held in separate prisons nearby. The only contact the men have with their wives and children is through mobile phones.

For everything you ever wanted to know about Rohingya—an ethnic group we don’t resettle (yet!)—see our Rohingya Reports category.

Thousands of Burmese Muslims arriving in camps in Thailand looking to be resettled in the West

Most of the Burmese (Myanmarese) refugees who have come to the US in the last few years are Christian, but it appears that Muslims now are getting the word and filling the camps in Thailand looking to register with the UN in order to be resettled.  The camp in this story, Mae La Camp, houses 10,000 Muslims including Rohingya.  They want to go to the US, Canada, or Australia.

From The National*:

Mae La Camp, Thailand // Spread along a series of hillocks under a huge rocky outcrop, the Mae La refugee camp presents a peaceful panorama of closely-packed thatched roofs amid the dense jungle.

But Mae La’s mellow aspect belies both the trauma suffered by its Myanmarese inhabitants and its changing ethnic composition as growing numbers of Myanmar’s Muslims, fed up with their position at the bottom of the pile in the poverty-stricken country, seek a new life in Thailand – and preferably further afield.

Mae La is the biggest of the nine camps for Myanmarese refugees on the Thai border and, since a sweeping UN resettlement programme was launched in 2005, has become the departure lounge for thousands of Myanmarese heading for new lives in countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada.

Amid the camp’s humble dwellings built by the refugees from tree trunks and bamboo poles, Mae La’s main mosque stands out. The big two-storey structure has painted concrete walls and a corrugate iron roof, and Muslims in white robes, some of whom physically resemble Bangladeshis or Indians, walk down a wooden staircase from the upstairs prayer hall following lunchtime prayers.

“The number of Muslims arriving in Mae La is increasing,” said Kamal, president of the mosque, a thin 43-year-old in a white T-shirt and dark blue longyi, the sarong-like garment worn by Myanmarese men.

“Before Muslims were just coming here from Karen state. Now they also hail from Rakhine, Mon and Yangon. Many of the young Muslims do not want to go back. Here in the camp they discover more about the world and see a better future for themselves and their children outside the country.”

* Note that this report is in The National from Abu Dhabi, but none of these Muslim refugees will be going to any Muslim country.  Couldn’t the wealthy United Arab Emirates take some of their fellow Muslims?  Or, how about Saudi Arabia?  Not a chance, it never happens!  Afraid of offending the little tyrant countries, not one of the humanitarians at the UN ever says a word.

By the way, we took over 16,000 Burmese this past fiscal year.  That number was only eclipsed by the number of Iraqis we resettled, here.

For more information on Rohingya, visit our category Rohingya Reports where we have chronicled that groups campaign to be resettled in western countries.  So far, Rohingya have gone to Australia, Ireland, Canada and the UK, others likely as well.

Reform Canadian immigration by taking more refugees the UN picks for them?

Canadian immigration minister, Jason Kenney, says he wants to reform the Canadian refugee program by getting rid of all the “fake” asylum seekers and taking more refugees that the UN wants to move out of camps around the world.   Nice sentiment I suppose but I see some flaws in his thinking.

First, I see nothing mentioned in this story about sealing Canada’s borders which would be the only way to stop the asylum seekers from getting in, once in what does he propose they do with them?   And, secondly, he places a lot of faith in the UN picking refugees for them.  Here is the story.

As part of its efforts to reform Canada’s refugee system, the government wants to bring in more refugees designated by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says.

This, he argues, would be a much more effective and efficient use of taxpayer dollars, benefitting people who are really facing persecution, instead of the thousands of “fake” applicants who apply within Canada each year.

In recent months, Mr. Kenney has spoken extensively about his desire to reform Canada’s refugee system. He has made it clear that he wants to lower the number of applications made within Canada, which has created a backlog of more than 60,000 applications and costs the government millions of dollars in social assistance while claimants await their hearings.

“My concern is more broadly with how easy it is to abuse Canada’s generosity and for non-refugees to immigrate to Canada through the back door of our asylum system using the long processing times and the…various levels of appeal, to string out a fake asylum claim to several years of residency in Canada and sometimes ultimately to gain permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview last week. 

The minister says resources aren’t properly spent the way the system works now, and that real refugees in desperate need of assistance are being allowed to languish in limbo as others take advantage of Canada’s system. He wants to see that situation reversed.

Interestingly I didn’t spot this story at its original source but got it from a Muslim Rohingya website, here.  You can bet Mr. Kenney’s proposal makes their day at Rohingyas International.

Canada is accepting thousands of Bhutanese Hindu, Burmese Karen, Burmese Rohingya and Iraqi refugees, all of whom live in refugee camps, said Mr. Kenney.

The Conservative government, over the years, has made a point of highlighting the admittance of such groups into Canada whenever they have occurred, and Mr. Kenney said he would like to increase such intakes.

We have written a lot about Canada and I should have made a category for it but didn’t.  Our search function is a good one, so just type in ‘Canada’ to learn more about refugee issues there.

Australian report: 13,507 refugees to Australia this past year, 100 are Rohingya

This is a report from the Australian government about its refugee resettlement record this just-ending fiscal year.

Refugees from Iraq and Burma comprised about 40 per cent of the 13 507 refugees and other people in greatest humanitarian need who were granted visas to start a new life in Australia in 2008-09, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said today.

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Iraqis were the largest group in the 2008-09 humanitarian program with 2874 visas granted – including 500 additional refugee places that were reserved for this group last program year in recognition of their critical resettlement needs,’ Senator Evans said.

Australia now joins Canada and some European countries (including Ireland) in resettling Rohingya Muslims.  So far the US has officially not resettled Rohingya, but I bet that will soon change.  And, as a matter of fact, some may have already come in with the Burmese Karen Christians.

The second-largest group resettled were Burmese, most of whom had been living in camps along the Thai-Burma border for more than 20 years. This group also included more than 100 Burmese Rohingya who have been living in the Cox’s Bazaar region of Bangladesh since 1992.

See my first post on Rohingya and Cox’s Bazaar here.  Our whole Rohingya category is here (this is the 80th post on the subject!).

Wanting to be sure to be good humanitarians, the Australian government says they will take even more refugees this coming fiscal year.

The minister said Australia remained a world leader in humanitarian resettlement, both in terms of numbers resettled and the services provided to help them rebuild their lives.

‘The program will continue to grow in the year ahead, with an increase of 250 places building on the 2008-09 increase, to bring the total program to 13 750 for 2009-10,’ Senator Evans said. ‘Our ongoing efforts to help vulnerable populations are a clear demonstration of our nation’s compassion for those in need.’

For information on Australia’s problems with refugees, visit our category for that country, here.

Rohingya hoping for resettlement in the Czech Republic

I came across this month-old article (probably from the UNHCR) but just today published at a Rohingya website.   If the Czech Republic is interviewing prospective refugees in Malaysia to come to their country, they will likely be Rohingya Muslims.

With the wrap-up of a selection mission to Malaysia this week, the Czech Republic is on its way to becoming the first former Eastern Bloc nation to become a resettlement country for refugees.

Henrik Nordentoft, acting UNHCR representative in Malaysia, said that while the Czechs have a history of receiving refugees, this is the first time a resettlement programme is being formalized where the Czech government selects refugees to start a new life in the country. The small Central European country is initially to take about two dozen Myanmar refugees from Malaysia.

“The Czech Republic joins a small group of countries who offer resettlement to refugees and UNHCR is grateful to the Czech Republic for responding to our call to countries to offer this vital assistance to refugees,” added Nordentoft. “For many refugees, being offered a new home in another country can mean the difference between life and death. It offers refugees both protection and a lasting solution to their plight.”

A Czech delegation is completing a mission to Kuala Lumpur to interview some 40 refugees for selection and to provide cultural orientation. The Czech pilot programme is aimed at helping vulnerable refugees, so top consideration was given to survivors of trauma, refugees with serious medical problems, or protection needs.

The following information must be inaccurate because the US alone will be taking between 70,000-80,000 refugees this fiscal year, and who knows how high the Obama Administration will set the ceiling for FY2010 which begins October 1st.

The Czech Republic joins the ranks of some 19 countries worldwide that open their doors annually to refugees through formal resettlement programmes, and is the eighth European Union country to have established such a programme. Some 70,000 refugees are accepted for resettlement worldwide every year.

See our category on Rohingya here.