Does any of this sound familiar?
Systematic discrimination and the denial of citizenship. Rampaging mobs engaging in violent attacks against a religious minority. Evidence of collusion with the government and state security forces in broader attempts at ethnic cleansing. Places of worship torched. People herded into squalid camps of internally displaced people. Hordes of starving refugees desperately fleeing by sea in boats, encountering resistance and a geopolitical blame-game as they approach unfriendly, foreign shores.
Reluctantly erected resettlement camps. The discovery of mass graves.
The unfolding tragedy of the Muslim Rohingya of Myanmar and Bangladesh bears at least a passing resemblance to many injustices of the past 100 years: From the persecution of the Jews in Europe, and the rejection of the SS St. Louis as it bore 900 Jews across the Atlantic from Nazi Germany, to the forlorn Sikhs on the Komagata Maru who tried to land in Vancouver in 1914. In more recent years, the anguish of those suffering in failed states or through civil war – from Syria to Sri Lanka – has intersected with exploitative traffickers willing to cram as many desperate souls as possible aboard barely seaworthy ships.
The result has been a hard-to-fathom catastrophe.
In the Mediterranean, a dramatic increase in the number of bodies floating off European shores has alarmed Western leaders into co-ordinating policy.
In Southeast Asia, it has taken a similarly surreal tragedy to spur governments from their long-standing inaction. But the region remains fragmented and self-interested, and supposedly liberalizing Myanmar, where the problem originates, is hardly committed to a solution.
The exodus to Malaysia and Indonesia of Muslim Rohingya – who are fleeing discrimination and violence in Myanmar, where they are viewed as stateless migrants, as well as desperate poverty in Bangladesh – has been going on for years. The United Nations estimates 120,000 have fled since 2012.
But it was made suddenly more dramatic by the discovery of a mass grave in Thailand, which prompted a Thai crackdown on human traffickers that caused many of the smuggler ship captains to abandon their human cargos at sea. Thousands have already been rescued, but an estimated 8,000 more are thought to be drifting at sea in crowded boats – with dwindling supplies of food and water. Hundreds of other Rohingya were abandoned in trafficking camps in the jungle along Thailand's southern border with Malaysia.
Until recently, when they caved to mounting international pressure, the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand had a formal "push-back" policy toward the boats that resulted in a tragic game of maritime ping pong between the countries: They simply provided the starving migrants with food and water – sometimes dropping it into the water and making the migrants jump overboard to get it – before pushing them back out far away from the shore, where they would soon become another country's problem.
ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has long ignored the issue. The regional body was chaired by Myanmar last year, and will likely continue its toothless approach to any serious regional problem.
But although the Rohingya issue certainly has international dimensions, it has its roots in Myanmar's deeply discriminatory policies. Previous outbreaks of violence in 2012 and 2013, as well as forced internment in camps, have already been well documented by Human Rights Watch. The violations have continued, long after Canada lifted some harsh sanctions in 2012; former foreign minister John Baird – in a statement about ethnic violence in Myanmar that year – did not even use the term Rohingya, which Myanmar's rulers also avoid, since they see the more than one million Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
There is hope as regional leaders meet in Thailand at the end of May to address the Rohingya crisis, but there is skepticism that anything will be done domestically within Myanmar, where the Rohingya are viewed with hatred. The country is also facing a landmark democratic election this year where no one – not even Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize winner – will risk speaking out stridently on the Muslim Rohingya's behalf, which would infuriate the Buddhist electorate.
As a desperately needed solution is hammered out, we should be wary of any overly optimistic talk of contined ASEAN integration, or of Myanmar's opening.