AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL to the governments of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
OPEN LETTER
Date 29 January 2009
AI Index: ASA 01/001/2009
To the governments of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand
Your Excellencies,
We write to you to raise our serious concern about the plight of the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Rakhine State, western Myanmar. Thousands of Rohingyas have fled in recent months on boats sailing for Thailand and Malaysia, and hundreds are missing, feared drowned. Their situation has reached a critical stage over the last two months, as the Thai military have forcibly expelled approximately 1,000 Rohingyas arriving in southwest Thailand by boat, while the Indian and Indonesian authorities have rescued hundreds of them.
In order to address this crisis, Amnesty International makes the following recommendations to the governments of Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand as a matter of urgency:
? Myanmar must immediately stop the systematic persecution of the Rohingya minority, which is the root cause of the crisis;
? All governments should meet their obligations under the law of the sea and provide assistance to those in distress at sea, including search and rescue service;
? All governments should provide immediate access to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to all Rohingyas in their territory;
? All governments should ratify the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, its 1967 Protocol, and the UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.
With lives still at risk, Amnesty International reminds regional governments of their specific obligations under the law of the sea which are applicable to situations of migrants found or intercepted at sea. In addition to the UN International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR), both the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), to which Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Myanmar, Thailand and India are parties, include obligations to provide assistance to those found in distress at sea. These obligations exist concurrently to human rights obligations.
Specifically, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) obliges state parties to require the master of a ship flying its flag to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost and rescue persons in distress. The obligation to provide assistance applies regardless of the nationality, status or circumstances of the individuals. Moreover, all coastal states are obliged to establish and maintain search and rescue services for this purpose, including through regional cooperation arrangements.
Ensuring the safety and dignity of those rescued and of the crew must be the immediate consideration in determining where individuals rescued at sea are taken. Under international law, the state responsible for the search and rescue region in which survivors were recovered is responsible for providing a place of safety or ensuring that such a place of safety is provided. However, each state must ensure that individuals are not returned or transferred to a place where they may be at risk of serious human rights violations. Where individuals may be seeking or be in need of international protection, the rescuing state must transfer them to territory where access to a fair and satisfactory asylum process with full procedural safeguards is guaranteed. continue http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGASA010012009&lang=e&rss=recentnews
