Myanmar insisted it was not to blame for Southeast Asia's latest influx of "boat people" at a regional crisis meeting on Friday, as the United States said thousands of vulnerable migrants adrift at sea needed urgent rescue.
More than 3,000 migrants have landed in Indonesia and Malaysia since Thailand launched a crackdown on human trafficking gangs this month. About 2,600 are believed to be still adrift in boats, relief agencies have said.
While some of the migrants are Bangladeshis escaping poverty at home, many are members of Myanmar's 1.1 million Rohingya Muslim minority who live in apartheid-like conditions in the country's Rakhine state.
"You cannot single out my country," Htein Lin, director general at Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of the country's delegation to Friday's meeting in Bangkok, said in his opening remarks. "In the influx of migration, Myanmar is not the only country."
The region was suffering from a human trafficking problem, he said, and Myanmar would cooperate with regional and international efforts to find "practical mechanisms" to deal with it.
Myanmar does not consider the Rohingya citizens, rendering them effectively stateless, while denying it discriminates against them or that they are fleeing persecution. It does not call them Rohingya but refers to them as Bengalis, indicating they are from Bangladesh.
The Bangkok gathering brings together 17 countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and elsewhere in Asia, along with the United States, Switzerland and international bodies such as the UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency.
Host Thailand said the meeting's three objectives were: to provide humanitarian assistance; to combat the long-term problems of people smuggling; and to address the root causes of the problem.
"More than ever, we need a concerted effort by all countries concerned," Thai Foreign Minister General Tanasak Patimapragorn said in an opening address. "It needs both Thai and international cooperation to solve the problem comprehensively."
Delicate issue
One delegate said Myanmar was pushing for other participants not to use the term "Rohingya" and that most were respecting Myanmar's request, although he added that the country's mere presence in the Thai capital represented progress.
"It's a very delicate issue for Myanmar and it requires cooperation and dialogue for all of us to be able to find a solution," said the delegate, who declined to be identified.
But Volker Turk, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection at the UNHCR, said the deadly pattern of migration across the Bay of Bengal could only be ended if Myanmar addressed the root causes.
"This will require full assumption of responsibility from Myanmar to all its people," he said. "Granting of citizenship is the ultimate goal."
Some participants have cautioned that the meeting was unlikely to produce a binding agreement or plan of action, given many attendees, including those from Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia, were not ministerial-level.
Officially called the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean, the gathering takes place against the grim backdrop of Malaysia's discovery of nearly 140 graves at 28 suspected people smuggling camps strung along its northern border. Thai authorities earlier found 36 bodies in abandoned camps on their side of the border, which led to the crackdown.
Malaysia said it was exploring the possibility of holding a summit meeting within the next few weeks for the leaders of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar.
"This is with a view to finding a workable solution to the crisis at hand," Ibrahim Abdullah, deputy secretary general at Malaysia's foreign affairs ministry, told the meeting.
People-smuggling camps
The crisis erupted at the beginning of the month, when the Thai crackdown made it too risky for traffickers to land migrants, prompting them to abandon thousands at sea.
Regional governments have struggled to respond, although images of desperate people crammed aboard overloaded boats with little food or water prompted Indonesia and Malaysia to soften their initial reluctance to allow the migrants to come ashore.
Malaysia, which says it has already taken 120,000 illegal immigrants from Myanmar, and Indonesia said last week they would give temporary shelter to those migrants already at sea, but that the international community must shoulder the burden of resettling them.
Thailand has refused to allow the boats to land, saying it is already sheltering 100,000 migrants from Myanmar, but has deployed a naval task force to offer medical aid at sea.
Thailand said on Friday it had given the United States permission to fly surveillance flights over Thai airspace to identify boats carrying migrants.
"We have to save lives urgently," US Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard told reporters on her way into the meeting. US air missions were already operating from bases in Malaysia, she said.
