Vanessa Moore
The plot smacks more of a grisly Hollywood horror film than a real life news story: stormy seas, boats adrift, traffickers brandishing weapons, starvation… disaster. But that’s the real life storyline sadly facing thousands of impoverished refugees trapped in the midst of a growing worldwide migration crisis. And the sheer scale of the problem means the chaos now spans a number of countries, continents and even oceans. But this time round war isn’t the only cause. Economics is also playing a part.
For weeks we’ve watched the tragic stories of those fleeing for a better life unfold as they brave death to cross the seas in shoddy, over packed dinghies that are more comparable to floating sarcophaguses than seaworthy vessels. Instability in the Middle East and North Africa have propelled a vast number of refugees to try their luck and escape to Europe traversing the Mediterranean; while in Asia and Australia, migrants from both the Middle East and Myanmar are braving the perilous journey across the Indian Ocean.
But instead of assuming a human-interest script, this unhappy movie storyline is increasingly being assimilated under a “war on traffickers” subplot, where armies already have their fingers on the trigger. Europe is now embracing this narrative in its efforts to tackle the deluge of smuggler vessels in the Mediterranean secretly shipping migrants from Libya. And already 1,800 of them have perished this year. Last week EU authorities approved a military sea and air mission to destroy the traffickers’ boats before they can take on more refugees. While the continent has succeeded in persecuting the criminals, there seem to be no plans so far to tackle the profounder causes of the mass exodus: the chaos in Libya and other post-Arab spring countries. Presuming that everything can be sorted out pretty sharpish just by destroying a few dinghies is hardly a clever solution.
Similarly, moving across the globe to Asia, over the past two weeks thousands of migrants have been rescued off the coasts of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand after the Thai authorities clamped down on trafficking following the macabre discovery of mass migrant graves replete with grisly human remains. According to the Associated Press, since May 10 alone, more than 3,600 people — about half of them from Bangladesh and half Rohingya from Myanmar — have landed ashore.
International pressure is now growing for ASEAN to do something about it, but the organization’s lack of teeth and consensus-based modus operandi hardly bodes well for solutions. The decision last week by Indonesia and Malaysia to give temporary shelter to the thousands marooned at sea appears to have neutralized a potential humanitarian tragedy; but the origins of the crisis remain. Myanmar’s military government insists the Rohingya are illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and has denied them citizenship, the root cause for thousands of them bolting.
So how should these lamentable Rohingya exiles escape their sorry plight seek asylum?
Crossing the ocean only a short distance from Indonesia, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s answer has been to point-blank deny possibility of citizenship for anyone who enters the country illegally by sea. And worryingly back in Europe, Australia’s tough stance on asylum-seeker vessels is now being peddled as the panacea for the hundreds of North African exiles crossing the Mediterranean.
Despite the outrage at the deaths at sea, fears of irregular migration have worryingly turned the debate from questioning why people are fleeing to one of how to stop the boats. But this type of argument is fallacious. It shouldn’t be about stopping the dinghies, Australian-style. Instead there needs to be a wider dialogue about why people are risking the treacherous journey in the first place.
You’d think the massive numbers would go some way to prompting a public outcry and coordinated worldwide response. But instead it’s perversely backfiring. The millions of nameless corpses washing up in multitudes only increases their invisibility. The higher the numbers and the larger the mass graves, the less we can imagine the individual lives.
Sadly the only thing for certain at the moment is that as the boats continue to deposit their wretched loads, the death toll of anonymous faces is all but guaranteed to rise.
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