More Rohingya are arriving in Bangladesh from Myanmar with war-related injuries amid escalating conflict between the military and the Arakan Army (AA) in western Rakhine State, according to international medical group Doctors without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.

MSF said its teams in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, treated 39 people for conflict-related injuries including mortar shell injuries and gunshot wounds in the four days leading up to August 7. More than 40 percent of the injured were women and children, it added in a statement.

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Jakarta (VNA) – The 16th Meeting of the ASEAN Committee on the Implementation of the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers (16th ACMW Meeting) has been held recently in Jakarta via videoconference.

The event was hosted and chaired by Indonesia’s Ministry of Manpower as the ACMW Chair 2023-2024.

Over 50 delegates from the ACMW focal points of all ten ASEAN Member States (AMS) and the ASEAN Secretariat attended the meeting. Participants from Timor-Leste’s focal points also attended as observers for the first time.

The meeting reviewed the progress on the implementation of the Action Plan (2018-2025) of the ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers. Key outcomes and challenges of the completed initiatives as well as the implementation of ongoing and planned projects were discussed.

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Bangladesh is not doing enough to protect Rohingya from increasing violence by armed groups and criminal gangs operating in the refugee camps near the country’s border with Myanmar, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Some of these stateless refugees who fled from persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine state are all the more vulnerable because Bangladeshi authorities force them to act as informants against criminal elements, the New York-based watchdog alleged in a new report.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s past pledges to protect Rohingya refugees are now threatened by violent groups and an indifferent justice system,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).

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In southeast Asian region, Chinese human trafficking syndicates operate in nexus with local authorities in countries for luring away hundreds of people on the pretext of providing them decent jobs but are forced to work in the illegal cryptocurrency business, brothels, and massage parlours, Mekong News reported. According to Mekong News, this is modern-day slavery which Chinese human trafficking syndicates perpetrate without facing meaningful resistance from authorities in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, all three major hubs of trafficking business, estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

In its 2021 report, the US-based Institute of Peace said Myanmar has become a centre of action for Chinese criminal groups whose networks have grown far beyond the Southeast Asian country. Chinese businessman Zhao Wei runs Golden Triangle SEZ, which is a multibillion-dollar gambling enclave and a known hub of human trafficking activity in this Southeast Asian country.

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Forced to flee her Magway village in southeast Myanmar during a junta attack, Theingi Soe spent a “terrible” month living in makeshift shelters in the jungle during the rainy season. In her misery, she began to plot another escape – to a life in a country beyond the conflict.

An acquaintance put her in touch with a hiring agent in Yangon who promised work in Dubai. She paid 1 million kyats (U.S. $476) upfront to be connected to a family in need of domestic help, bought her own plane ticket, and arrived in her new home on Dec. 26, 2021, nervous but hopeful she would find a measure of stability among the city’s gleaming high rises and shining shopping malls.

Instead, Theingi Soe, 27, says she has been confronted with new hardships: denied wages she had been promised in Myanmar; forced to work 16-hour days on just one meal a day; “sold” from one unscrupulous broker to another, her “debt” rising with each purchase.

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The post Escaping the chaos of home, Myanmar migrants face exploitation abroad first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Thai-Cambodian discussions at the recent ASEAN summit put labour issues on the table. Despite the pleasant chat, migrant workers in Thailand have yet to see what, if any, measures the authorities will adopt to help address their problems.

In a bilateral meeting on the sideline of the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summits on 10 November 2022, Hun Sen expressed gratitude to the Thai government for allowing Cambodian workers to enter Thailand and called for further cooperation in the matter.

According to a press release from the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hun Sen and Prime Minister, Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha met to affirm their existing good relationship and continued cooperation in all fields including the entry of Cambodian migrant workers to Thailand.

While the meeting ended on a positive note, Cambodian workers here feel that their government and embassy should do more to protect and help them. 

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At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, is indifferent to the urban bustle of the country’s second largest city.

“I come here to work, make some money, not to play around,” she says, sitting outside the semi-abandoned housing complex that she guards. “In the past six months, the only place I have visited is the market.”

Around six years ago, Nguyen and her husband gave up their farm in Tien Giang province, on the Mekong Delta. Faced with increasing saltwater intrusion, they had switched from growing rice to cultivating more salt-tolerant pineapples. But even this was not enough. Yields had been falling for a few seasons, then in 2016 the water in their local canals – which connect with the Mekong River – became so salty that even the pineapple plants couldn’t cope, and they stopped bearing fruit.

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The post Climate change and dams force older residents to leave Vietnam’s Mekong Delta first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Rights groups say the long-awaited rules Thailand’s government approved this month for screening foreigners seeking refuge from persecution in their home countries are likely to leave many worthy applicants in the lurch.

The United Nations refugee agency says Thailand currently hosts about 5,000 “urban refugees and asylum seekers,” though some rights groups say the real number may be much higher.

Thailand currently makes no official distinction between refugees or asylum seekers and other foreigners in the country illegally, leaving those seeking sanctuary at constant risk of arrest and a forced return home, where they may face arrest, torture or death.

Authorities often give refugees the chance to lay low or move to third countries, but forced more than 100 ethnic Uyghurs back to China in 2015 and four wanted political dissidents back to Cambodia, where they were promptly arrested, late last year.

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The post Thailand Sets Long-Awaited Rules for Vetting Asylum Seekers first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Thailand took a momentous step on 24 August  —not only because of a shock decision by the Constitutional Court to suspend Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha from his duties, but also because parliament finally passed a historic anti-torture bill.

Once fully enacted, the Bill, formally known as the Act on Prevention and Suppression of Torture and Enforced Disappearances, will give effect to the provisions of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and enable Thailand’s ratification of this keystone human rights treaty.

What’s been overlooked in the debate surrounding this new law is the impact it may have on Thailand’s problematic refugee policies and practices. Significantly, Section 13 of the new legislation enshrines in Thai law the principle of non-refoulement, an international legal principle that prohibits states from returning refugees, asylum seekers, and other individuals to situations where they may face the risk of torture and other grave human rights abuses. 

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The post Thailand’s Anti-Torture Bill Could Finally End Refugee Push-Backs first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The post Thailand rolls out red carpet for wealthy foreign workers with 10-year visa, tax breaks first appeared on Open Development Mekong.