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Introduction Introduction During the twentieth century, large movements of asylum seekers and refugees were a familiar sight in Asia. Th ere was a mass fl ight of Chinese (approximately one mil- lion)1 into Southeast Asia during the second Sino-Japanese war that accompanied the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1937.2 Immediately after the Second World War, ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia, who had been forced into China during the war, sought to return to the Southeast Asian countries that were their state of origin.3 Approximately 700 000 nationalist supporters fl ed China imme- diately after the Communists seized power in 1949, while the partition between India and Pakistan led to an estimated 8–10 million displaced people.4 In 1954, one million Vietnamese fl ed from the North of their country in the wake of the fi rst French-Indochina War. Border confl icts and internal disputes in Afghanistan, 1 V. Muntarbhorn, Th e Status of Refugees in Asia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 4. 2 Th e fi rst Sino-Japanese war occurred in 1932, when the Japanese seized the Th ree Eastern Prov- inces of China and the province of Jehol and this area was proclaimed an independent state from China, and called Manchukuo. H. M. Vinacke, A History of the Far East in Modern Times (Lon- don: George Allen and Unwin, 1960), p. 514. Th e Chinese continually contested the Japanese seizure of Manchukuo (which Japan claimed was rightful under the conditions of the release of the land from the Russians in the end of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war). Th e second Sino-Japanese war broke out, allegedly when Chinese troops opened fi re on Japanese troops who were in terri- tory outside of the agreed boundaries in Lukouchiao (Vinacke, A History of the Far East, 1960, p. 572). Th is led to a heightened military occupation of Manchuria by the Japanese with expulsion of Chinese and other incidences such as the fall of Nanking and the Chinese government retreat from Hankow to Chungking in Szechuan province. 3 United Nations Economic and Social Council, Report of the International Refugee Organization (IRO), E/1334, 1949, pp. 38–39. Th e International Refugee Organisation (IRO) was made responsible for the Chinese population repatriation, and encountered resistance to re-absorb this population from the Philippine government. Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore agreed to allow these people to return. 4 Hambro, E. Th e Problem of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff , 1955); Vernant, J. Th e Refugee in the Post-War World (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 738. 2 Introduction Iran, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan and Tibet,5 and the civil wars in Indochina all added to the refugee and asylum seeker population from the 1960s to the present day.6 During the 1980s and 1980s, 2.5 million fl ed Indochina alone.7 At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, Asia’s refugee population is still the largest of any region in the world.8 Asia has the highest number of ‘persons of concern’ who fall under the mandate of the Offi ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).9 It is also estimated that Asia has a large number of people who could claim refugee status but do not do so.10 Th ese people either do not know they are able to seek refugee status or fear their case for refugee status will not be recognised under the UNHCR’s defi nition of a refugee.11 As a result, while the UNHCR estimates there are 6,187,800 refugees in Asia, this fi gure is hardly inclusive.12 Th e only region in the world with a comparable problem is Africa.13 Across the globe, there are signifi cant variations in the way asylum seekers and refugees are treated. Th e international community’s response to asylum seekers and refugees has, since the League of Nations, primarily focused on the development of international legal rules. Th e ‘magna carta’14 of international refugee law is the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol Relating 5 See Muni, S. D. and Lok Raj Baral (eds.), Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia (Delhi: Konark Publishers, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Sri Lanka, 1996); Vincent, M. and Birgitte Refslund Sorensen (eds.), Caught Between Borders: Response Strategies of the Internally Displaced (London: Pluto Press, Norwegian Refugee Council, 2001). 6 See Chapter 6 in Zolberg, A., Astri Suhrke and Sergio Aguayo, Escape From Violence: Confl ict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); UNHCR, Th e State of the World’s Refugees (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 102. 7 Robinson, W. C. Terms of Refuge: Th e Indochinese Exodus and Th e International Response (London: Zed Books, 1998); UNHCR, State of the World’s Refugees, 2000, p. 102. 8 Asia contains 36 percent of the world’s refugees; Africa follows with 25%. UNHCR, Refugees by Numbers (2004 Edition), www.unhcr.ch/egi-bin/texis/basics. 9 Th e UNHCR’s defi nition of ‘populations of concern’ includes not only those who meet the Offi ce’s mandate for the defi nition of a refugee, but also people granted a humanitarian or comparable status (usually at the request of the UN Secretary-General or the UN General Assembly) and those granted temporary protection. UNHCR, Refugees by Numbers (2004 Edition), www.unhcr. ch/egi-bin/texis/basics. 10 USCR, World Refugee Survey 2002 (Washington: USCR, 2002), p. 11. United States Committee for Refugees (USCR) is an independent research body based in the United States. Th e USCR releases every year a publication called World Refugee Survey—which releases their own independent research into refugee and asylum seeking populations around the world, and individual state responses. 11 USCR, World Refugee Survey 2002 (Washington: USCR, 2002), p. 11. 12 UNHCR, Refugees by Numbers (2004 Edition), www.unhcr.ch/egi-bin/texis/basics. 13 Th e UNHCR statistics are calculated on a per capita basis, and therefore the impact of the population size of a region is discounted. However, population size is an obvious factor in creating large fl ows of refugees and this in itself makes the situation in Asia signifi cant. Th e fi gure for Asia admittedly includes 3 million Afghan refugees. If this group was excluded, Asia would still have a refugee population only second to Africa. UNHCR, Refugees by Numbers (2004 Edition), www. unhcr.ch/egi-bin/texis/basics. 14 Read, J. M. Magna Carta for Refugees (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1953); Hathaway, J. Th e Law of Refugee Status (Toronto: Butterworths, 1991)..
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