Nationalist Organisations have strongly objected to government providing refugee status to Rohingyas from Myanmar. In an open letter to Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananda Wijepala, the grouping has urged the government to send back those who arrived in northern Sri Lanka to Myanmar,

Excerpts of the letter: We are addressing this letter to present our grave concern over the arrivals of Rohingyas from Myanmar. The latest arrival of 113 Rohingyas on Dec 19, 2024 and the announcement by the Minister Wijayapala that a further 100,000 Rohingyas is expected to arrive prompted us to present some facts to the Government.

As per UN Refugee Council, there are 2.6m IDPs in Myanmar & 1.3m refugee/asylum seekers from Myanmar hosted in other countries. However, UN Member States are cutting humanitarian funding – from 70% in 2021, to 60% in 2022 & 30% in 2023. In 2023 WHO cut food rations from $12 per person to $8 per person.

Australia is also reducing aid to its NGOs supporting 390,000 Rohingyas ($11.2m in 2020 to $6.4m in 2023 which also covers NGO admin costs). Australia refuses to allow Rohingyas to resettle in Australia.

There are 1.1m Rohingyas living in Bangladesh detention camps since 2017. Rohingyas have been arriving in Bangladesh from Myanmar since 1970s with 30,000 new borns in the camps each year. The Bangladeshi goverment has accused Rohingyas of numerous crimes and the 2012 Ramu violence, displacing the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and importing narcotic drugs. To address this, the Bangladesh government proposed to relocate Rohingyas to a remote island (Bhasan Char) but was prevented by UNHCR. However, with increase in influx, the government proceeded to build 100,000 homes and relocated 20,000 Rohingyas in the island in December 2020.

The former Bangladeshi PM in 2022 asked the international community to help solve the Rohingya crisis Bangladesh was experiencing. The Bangladeshi government was spending $350million from its own resources to temporarily relocate 100,000 Rohingyas while Bangladesh spends $1.22billion every year for the Rohingyas alone. The former Bangladeshi PM said the refugees have caused loss of biodiversity, loss of forest area of around 6500 acres of land and “immeasurable adverse effects on the local population”.

Sri Lanka is facing an economic crisis of its own and has no financial wherewithal to spend on illegal arrivals and the situation Bangladesh is facing should be clear lessons for Sri Lanka, of the problems that may arise.

Sri Lanka is only just coming out of an economic bankruptcy declared crisis. Cost of living is skyrocketing, inflation is at an all-time high, the inequality-gap is widening, the government has an arduous task of resolving the problems of its own citizens first. We have 121,000 Sri Lankans displaced since 2021 from natural disasters and another 11,000 Sri Lankan refugees from the 30-year armed conflict who are still living in refugee camps and not resettled. Sri Lanka’s government must address these anomalies first.

Leaving aside the genuineness of asylum/refuge seekers, transporting people to another nation by boat for a payment is part of a global human smuggling/human trafficking/modern slavery that is a $150billion annual profitable “business” (ILO 2014) involving 50million people which includes forced sexual exploitation, domestic work, forced labour in agriculture and other economic activities, prostitution ($99b), pedophilia, child sex and marriage. As per ILO the business was generating $44b annual profits in 2005.

India and Bangladesh governments have also raised serious concern over Rohingya links to terror groups as well. This leads to the question of whether there is a link to local agents including politicians and NGOs who are part of the international human smuggling network who are promoting transportation of illegals by boats and pressuring governments to accept them. This entails the GoSL to open an investigation into all persons in Sri Lanka taking an unusual interest in keeping illegal boat arrivals in Sri Lanka.

As per the statement issued by Public Security Minister Ananda Wijayapala, the present group of Rohingyas that arrived in December 2024 had paid to be taken by boat and the boat had been arrested after entering Sri Lanka’s territorial waters and thereafter had claimed asylum/refugee status. If they had paid to be taken in boats to other countries, they cannot be categorised as refugees/asylum seekers. Sri Lanka cannot and should not become a hub for any form of human trafficking/modern slavery and its associated criminal activities.

Thus, the Government must request UNHCR to desist from encouraging refugees to arrive in nations that are not signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Parking refugees for an unspecified period and thereafter looking for nations to accept them is not a solution and results in unnecessary problems for both refugee and temporary host nation.

We also observe there is a political element in the pressure being exerted on the government using the term “humanitarian” to accept an influx of Rohingyas. If the transportation of people by boat is part of the global human smuggling racket, the government should investigate if those promoting to accept these “refugees” be they politicians or NGOs picketing, to be on the human smuggling payroll. The sudden call to establish an immigration/emigration centre to issue visas in East Sri Lanka cannot be a coincidence and questions whether it will be used to provide visa for illegals arriving on boats. The involvement of Opposition political parties/MPs in this issue may well be to create a new problem to bring the government into disrepute and make it unpopular amongst the public. Therefore, the government must not embrace any new problems that it cannot handle.