tagged w/ burmese refugees
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Your signature helps Burmese refugees now abused/enslaved in Malaysia. Sign letter: http://www.ethicaltraveler.org/actYour signature helps Burmese refugees now abused/enslaved in Malaysia. Sign letter:... more
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World Refugee Day is a great time to reflect upon the plight of refugees who seek safety and shelter in neighboring countries, such as Burmese refugees in Malaysia, yet instead they are denied the right to seek livelihood and safe, appropriate shelter, access health care, or receive education. Children, women, men and the elderly, including those who may be disabled, pregnant or ill, have been arrested, detained, sentenced, abused and trafficked inside Malaysia by government officials.World Refugee Day is a great time to reflect upon the plight of refugees who seek... more
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You will never look at a helicoptor the same way again. Learn about this strange and unusual punishment inflicted on refugees from Burma who are detained in Malaysia in camps that jail 700 people with only four toilets. Excerpts from interview with independent journalist Karen Zusman and David, a Burmese refugee recently released from detention:
KZ: I know the camps have become overcrowded because the Malaysian government has come under scrutiny from the U.S. about trafficking refugees. So the deportations have stopped, but the arrests have not stopped.
D: Yes, that is exactly how it is. So the camps are way too crowded. They just pack us in there, they don’t care. To them we are illegal. Like criminals. They don’t care why we are here. So they put us in here like as if we are dogs.
KZ: The government has now allowed journalists to visit the camps. We have heard that some camps are getting better. Is this true?
D: I want to tell you, with all due respect, it is not like anything good at all these camps. It is like, truly, it is like hell. And they treat us like animals.
KZ: And what about if a detainee gets sick — is there any medical treatment available?
D: This is also really bad. You can be sick but they are not going to let you see the doctor. It can be really bad. One night a girl was crying a lot. Then we heard a lot of girls screaming for help. For a couple of hours they were shouting like this. But the detention people wouldn’t get the first girl see the doctor or take her to the hospital. She died that night, because her appendix burst open. I was also sick. I have a heart tension problem. But they do not want to give you any medical [treatment], so you just have to suffer there.
K: Is there any kind of discipline or punishment?
D: Yes, yes. That is what I wanted to talk you about. Another problem is that we get punished a lot. There are three main types of punishment:
1. The first one is the helicopter. This one we have to make a noise with our mouth like a helicopter. Then we are forced to take our shirt off and swing it around with one arm like a propeller. That is why they call it the helicopter. Maybe we have to do this for one hour. Your arm and your throat are in so much pain, but you have to keep going. They say, “Do the helicopter!” Or you will be beaten. It is really a humiliation, that one — doing the helicopter in front of all these people.
2. Sometimes they just beat you for punishment. They don’t even ask you to do the helicopter.
3. Press-ups, maybe 50 or 100 press-ups, I mean push-ups, in the sun.
KZ: I have heard from other refugees that there are many people in the camps that were registered and arrested anyway, even though they showed the police their U.N. refugee card at the time of arrest — do you know anything about this?
D: Yes, this is also true. I don’t understand why they do that. The RELA, the immigration police, they really don’t seem to care about this card, if you have it or you don’t. Sometimes they might rip it up and laugh at you, or throw it on the floor or put it in their pocket. It only helps after you have been in the camps a long time and experiencing this kind of hell for a while. Then the U.N. can take you out. But not before.
KZ: What is your dream for the future?
D: It is very simple, really. I want to have a family. And I want to see my mother and father in Burma, my parents. Let me tell you, this is a serious thing. A most important thing. For me first I need to see my parents. Then I want to get married and have my own family. As a free man. It can be in any country. Just not in Asia anymore please. I have been in Thailand, too, and it is also bad. We are from Burma. We want to go home to our families only in Burma. But we cannot. So then our next dream is that we would like to come to a country where we can have a family and be safe.
Read full interview, hear audio excerpts at worldfocus.org
for more info and to hear audio doc: www.pleasedontsaymyname.orgYou will never look at a helicoptor the same way again. Learn about this strange and... more
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Last week, authorities in Malaysia announced that they arrested five immigration officers for rounding up illegal immigrants from Myanmar and selling them to human traffickers.
Karen Zusman, an independent journalist, recently returned from Malaysia, where she reported on the plight of Burmese refugees.
In this conversation she speaks to “Jack” — a Burmese refugee in Malaysia whose girlfriend, brother and friend had been rounded up by immigration officials and put in detention camps.
Listen in as she catches up with Jack about recent developments in Malaysia. His girlfriend has been deported to Myanmar to marry a soldier, his brother remains in a detention camp and his friend “John” has been released, but faces an uncertain future.
Jack yearns for a brighter future, but has himself lost his job. Though he has a UNHCR refugee card, he still fears the police and has nowhere to turn.
Listen here:
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/07/29/burmese-refugee-in-malaysia-loses-job-girlfriend-and-hope/6528/
For more in depth information and to hear more audio or a documentary about the plight of Burmese refugees, visit:
www.pleasedontsaymyname.orgLast week, authorities in Malaysia announced that they arrested five immigration... more
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view video of Burmese refugees sold to human traffickers by Malaysian immigration officials. Karen Zusman reporting for World Focus.view video of Burmese refugees sold to human traffickers by Malaysian immigration... more
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My friend Sin Yi fled Burma when the Burmese military junta started coming to his village and forcing boys like him to join the army.
"They stop us at the bus station or on the street and by gun point they say to us:
'Come, you must join the army. If you don't join we will kill you. Come, join...'"
Aye Aye Cho told me she left Burma because the junta used to come to her village and separate the women from the men.
"Then they would come and take any woman they wanted to sleep with them in a little hut for the night."
"If you refused to go with them you had to pay them instead. One night they came for me, I told them to come back later and I would pay them. But I didnt have any money, so that night I ran from one bush to the other. I ran away from Burma."
"In Thailand i had friends who told me to go to Malaysia where I would be safe."
"Sadly," she told me, "I listened to these friends."
Unfortunately, what Sin Yi and Aye Aye Cho found waiting for them in Malaysia was equally as tragic as what they left behind.
Burma is bleeding well beyond its borders.
To date there are more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma, including Buddhist monks and one Nobel Peace Laureate (Aung San Suu Kyi). Military and civilian officials are involved in the unlawful conscription of child soldiers and wide-spread acts of forced labor inside of Burma. And scores of people are perishing due to the extreme poverty caused by the regime's mis-use of power and by its handling of the Cyclone Nargis crisis.
Yet there is another Burma-related tragedy, which until now has not been widely told.
In April 2009 the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee published the results of a year-long investigation into allegations that the Malaysian government has been complicit in the human trafficking of people seeking refuge from the extreme persecution they faced in Burma. Once in Malaysia, through a highly organized process between police, immigration officials and traffickers, the refugees are sold to prostitution rings and fishing trawlers.
Please Don't Say My Name is an audio documentary; it stems from my friendship with a small group of Burmese refugees who work together in a restuarant in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I spent a year and a half getting to know them and in early 2009 I traveled to Kuala Lumpur to record their stories. Many of them have been sold to traffickers by Malaysian Immigration Officials--and some of them were arrested while I was there.
The audio-only documentary is one hour in length; the interviews are intimate in tone and record many aspects of their lives both inside and outside of work, prison, detention camps and RELA immigration raids highlighting their continued vulnerability in Malaysia--as well as their ability to create family-like bonds despite the severity of their circumstance.
Listen to the whole doc or just to selected clips, and read a photographic essay.
Learn how to help and share with your friends!
www.pleasedontsaymyname.orgMy friend Sin Yi fled Burma when the Burmese military junta started coming to his... more
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