ANU College of Asia & the Pacific the & Asia of College ANU A publication produced by produced publication A paradigm_shift people movement people Edition 03 Autumn 2018 paradigm_shift people movement Autumn 2018 Autumn Edition 03 Edition A publication produced by produced A publication ANU College of Asia & the Pacific & of Asia ANU College ANU College of Asia & the Pacific HC Coombs Building #9 The Australian National University Canberra ACT 2601 Australia T 1800 620 032 E [email protected] W asiapacific.anu.edu.au ANUasiapacific ANUasiapacific anu_asiapacific ANU College of Asia & the Pacific CRICOS Provider #00120C Introduction Regional snapshots 01 Dr Nicholas Farrelly 07 Professor Helen James Worlds in motion Urbanisation and rural development: interrogating changing socio‑economic realities in contemporary Myanmar Politics, opportunity, trauma and regulation 08 Dr John Funston 02 Professor William Maley Malaysia and the Rohingya – Refugees, security and populism humanitarianism and domestic imperatives 03 Dr Ceclia Jacob 09 Dr Rizwana Shamshad Forced migration, early warning and the prevention of mass atrocities From persecution to safe haven? Rohingya asylum seekers in Melbourne 04 Dr Cynthia Banham 10 Assistant Professor Yasuko Hassall Kobayashi Apathy, the mistreatment of non‑citizens, and the problem with From non‑immigrant country to de facto public accountability immigrant country: recent shifts in Japanese immigration policy 05 Susanna Price 11 Associate Professor Katerina Teaiwa Legislative paradigm shifts for involuntary people movement: Moving people, an update moving islands in Oceania 06 Dr Luke Bearup 12 Dr Sverre Molland Migrating to the blockchain: exploring Beyond anti‑trafficking? Rethinking the implications for the recognition migration management in Asia of Others 13 Kirsty Anantharajah The achievements of the Manus Island resistance The Australian National University does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented here are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University, its staff, or its trustees. 01 Autumn 2018 Dr Nicholas Farrelly Dr Nicholas Farrelly is the Associate Dean In 2017, the world was faced, yet again, by at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, the deeply troubling violence that often responsible for development and impact precipitates the largescale movement of our initiatives. In this role, he leads the College’s fellow human beings. In that case, almost engagement with a wide range of government, 700,000 Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim Worlds in motion business and civil society organisations. After minority from western Myanmar, fled their graduating from ANU in 2003 with First homes seeking sanctuary in Bangladesh. Class Honours and the University Medal in An enormous humanitarian response swung Asian Studies, he completed his M.Phil and into action, but most of the damage had D.Phil at Balliol College, University of been done. Villages burned to the ground, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. families torn apart. There are allegations Since 2011, he has held a number of key of rapes and murders too numerous to academic positions in the ANU College of comprehend. Myanmar government denials Asia and the Pacific, including as convenor have done little to convince sceptical of the Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours) audiences. Their unwillingness to allow program. His own academic research focuses independent investigators to undertake their on political conflict and social change in painstaking work in northern Rakhine State mainland Southeast Asia. He has examined these themes across the borderlands where has made it hard to start accounting for what Myanmar rubs against India, Bangladesh and happened during those turbulent, disastrous China. While studying these areas, Nicholas months. The reputation of Myanmar’s has continued to research, write and lecture State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, has about Thailand, a country at the heart of been shredded by her reticent and uncaring some of his oldest academic interests. response. Myanmar’s security agencies have big questions to answer, but the protection offered by Chinese and Russian diplomatic vetoes imply that growing calls for serious scrutiny will be elbowed aside. Dr Nicholas Farrelly Dr Nicholas The Rohingya – vulnerable, impoverished, unloved – are now huddled together in a thin strip of land between the Bay of Bengal and the mountains that cascade down from the north. As the monsoon rains and storms turn everything to mud, it is difficult to imagine a more miserable situation. On current trends, hundreds of thousands of these Rohingya will be stuck in Bangladesh with no apparent prospects for formal resettlement elsewhere. Some will take to the sea, hopeful of finding a better future somewhere else, Without implying that there is a borderless utopian maybe Malaysia or Indonesia. Others fix to today’s iniquitous landscape of population will strike out overland, looking for opportunities in India, or perhaps beyond. movement, it may be worth us all thinking harder about what kind of connections we value, and Continues on next page how we can help to ensure that everyone gets the sort of movement that they deserve. Worlds in motion 3 01 paradigm_shift — Edition 03 Autumn 2018 A lucky few might have a chance to fly out of That grim Rohingya predicament should Dhaka, throwing themselves on the mercy of encourage reflection on the contrasts and people smugglers and border officials. There contradictions of people movement today. For are no good options for the displaced Rohingya, billions of others, including me, the 21st century and even if a program of large-scale and has unleashed untold opportunities for well-resourced resettlement to Myanmar is one unprecedented movement and interaction. day possible, there will always be the lingering At any given moment, there are almost prospect of further violence and, therefore, 10,000 planes above the earth. Together, future waves of migration and displacement. moment-by-moment, they are carrying well over one million people. It is a city in the sky. The darkness of this Rohingya conundrum That high technology part of this transport offers lessons about the inadequacy of policy equation naturally gets lots of attention, but responses to large-scale people movement. we should not pretend that it is only in modern Nobody was able or willing to stop the conveyances that people are on the move. persecution of the Rohingya which forced The boats from South and Southeast Asia them from their homes. And, once displaced, that have featured so prominently in the the Rohingya have found themselves caught past generation on the Australian political in grand geo-political and geo-cultural battles landscape will never go away. And then think which limit their chance of a positive outcome. of all the millions of buses, trains, trucks, and Formal mechanisms – whether grounded in more. With billions of cars, too. And then all international law, the practices of the United the people on bikes, on foot, crawling. The Nations, or the protocols of the Association volume of movement, everywhere, almost all of Southeast Asian Nations – all appear the time, is a spectacular aspect of the human inadequate. Political activism and advocacy, societies that we have created together. while it has come in many pro-Rohingya flavours, also seems to have failed, at each And the story keeps getting busier. If you step, to shift the equation to the advantage ever take a long walk through one of Asia’s of those now displaced from their homes. vast airports, it quickly becomes clear that Dr Nicholas Farrelly Dr Nicholas A longterm stalemate, with hundreds of our standard geographies – of connections to thousands of lives in the balance, is probable. obvious places, well-marked in pop culture In a world on the move, the Rohingya are and scholarly discussion – are only a fraction stuck: without citizenship, without much of the destinations on offer. Cities that we money, and without many friends. might consider well off-the-beaten-track now claim huge airports of their own, with the resulting flurry of back-and-forth, in-and-out. A longterm stalemate, with hundreds of thousands of lives in the balance, is probable. In a world on the move, the Rohingya are stuck: without citizenship, without much money, and without many friends. 4 ANU College of Asia & the Pacific Worlds in motion 5 01 paradigm_shift — Edition 03 Autumn 2018 For many people, the government has not Inevitably, there are winners and losers. found the right balance. Some despair And much of what we have tended to that the longterm off-shore detention of understand of people movement has yet would-be asylum seekers is a black mark to fully catch up with the infrastructure against Australia’s record of providing a and technology at our disposal. In an era new life to those who need one. Others of the blockchain, artificial intelligence, fear that Australia’s capacity to absorb a and autonomous transportation, what larger population, particularly when people will the migration story become? arrive without official endorsement, is Answering this question will require too big a risk. Racism, particularly when further efforts to research and explore combined with hesitations about Muslim the deep connections and entanglements migrants, is a further bleak element of political of a world that continues to shift, often calculations. On such an emotive issue we dramatically, as its people get on the move. know that tempers fray easily. Many people With that in mind, our understanding of feel that there could be an easy fix, but only people movement needs to start and end if the politicians had greater courage. with the profoundly human dimensions The Australian situation, of political deadlock of this issue. The dire situation along the and resignation, helps to explain how such Myanmar-Bangladesh border, one that could ready resolutions are unlikely, perhaps prove intractable to the fixes proposed by impossible.