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Malacañang has refuted a report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which claimed that the country will deny entry to the runaway Asian migrants or “boat people” from Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Inquirer report in question is titled, “Human rights group: PH puts ‘boat people’ to death by turning them away.”
“In a statement, Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said the Philippines remains in solidarity with the United Nations (UN) in helping address the plight of the migrants from Myanmar’s Rohingya Islamic group and Bangladesh,” reports Louis Bacani on Philstar.com.
The report noted: “Coloma said the Philippines, as a state party to relevant instruments such as the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, concretely manifested its solidarity with the UN in assisting and providing relief to persons involuntarily displaced from their homelands as a consequence of political conflict.”
Coloma was quoted as saying, “The Philippines has extended humanitarian assistance to the ‘boat people’ and had even established a processing center for Vietnamese travelers in the seventies. What was cited in the Philippine Daily Inquirer report (on May 18) was a mere restatement of applicable provisions of our existing laws.”
He added, “We shall continue to do our share in saving lives under existing and long-standing mechanisms pursuant to our commitments under the Convention.”
The UN has made an appeal to Southeast Asian nations to open their ports and welcome the “boat people,” who headed out to sea to escape extreme poverty and political persecution in Bangladesh and Myanmar.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked Southeast Asian countries to “uphold the obligation of rescue at sea.”
Photo: AFP news clip
