DAP calls on Malaysian Government to send a government relief mission to the four Daerah Cox Bazar refugee camps for the Myanmar Rohingya Muslims

by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Friday, February 21, 1992:

DAP calls on Malaysian Government to send a government relief mission to the four Daerah Cox Bazar refugee camps for the Myanmar Rohingya Muslims

DAP calls on the Malaysian Government to send a government relief mission to the four Daerah Cox Bazar refugee camps for the Myanmar Rohingya Muslims at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border to provide humanitarian assistance to the 20,000 Myanmar Muslims who are reported to be in desperate straits without food supplies for a week.

Up to now, a reported 100,000 Rohingya Muslims had fled the western Myanmar state of Arakan into Bangladesh because of persecution, and the Malaysian government. The ASEAN countries and the international community must act as one to bring pressure on the Myanmar military junta to halt its gross violation of human rights in Myanmar.

DAP supports the proposal for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the gross violation of human rights in Myanmar.

If Malaysia and the ASEAM governments had taken a forth-right and clear-cut stand against the human rights violation of the Myanmar military junta right from the beginning, especially in refusing to return power to the people after the Myanmar general elections and the continued detention of Myanmar Opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims would probably not have reached this level.

Malaysia and the ASEAN countries have the right to put pressure on the Myanmar military junta for its violation of human rights, and reject any suggestion that this will be an interference of the domestic affairs and the sovereign rights of the Myanmese administration, because no national government has the sovereign right to violate the human rights of its citizens, as human rights is the right of all human beings, regardless of nationality or country.

DAP calls on the Malaysian Government to provide the lead in ASEAN on the issue of human rights violations in Myanmar, and particularly over the plight of the 100,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, and initiate actions for a common ASEAN stand in view of the proximity of Myanmar to ASEAN. Malaysia and ASEAN cannot and must not continue to be unmoved and unconcerned by the gross abuses and violations of human rights in Myanmar.