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Rohingya Refugee Voices Amplify Across Southeast Asia
BANGKOK — The 2017 Rohingya humanitarian crisis caused by Myanmar is not only affecting Bangladesh, which has taken in 740,000 refugees, but it’s also causing strife in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Despite Myanmar’s alleged attempts at repatriation, Rohingya have stayed put in camps and cities fearing the security situation in their villages and towns of Rakhine…
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Life as Afghan Refugees, depicted on Malay Stage
Popular Parastoo Theatre group gives voice to the refugee experience. BANGKOK – Live at this year’s Refugee Fest in Malaysia is Parastoo Theatre group. In the Dari language of Afghanistan, “Parastoo” means swallow bird. “They are birds who fly and never find [a] home,” said Saleh Sepas, playwright and director of Parastoo Theatre in Malaysia.…
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A Syrian Refugee’s Journey – Southeast Asia Dispatches
KUALA LUMPUR – Syrian refugee Hasan Al Akraa has become something of a minor celebrity in his adopted home of Malaysia. The 19-year-old is a prominent face in the country’s refugee community. Since fleeing the Syrian civil war with his family seven years ago, Hasan began raising funds online for refugees needing emergency medical assistance…
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Airport Asylum Seekers Find Freedom – Southeast Asia Dispatches
BANGKOK – In the past year Southeast Asia provided temporary shelter to two asylum seekers from the Middle East fleeing persecution. Hassan Alkontar and Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun plead for asylum from Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok airports. They were resettled to Canada. But this has led to a backlash online in Malaysia, Thailand, and Canada — where…
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Malaysia detains Hassan Al Kontar after removing him from airport
Al Kontar, 37, had been living in Kuala Lumpur International Airport since March, after being denied entry to Cambodia. Bangkok, Thailand – Syrian refugee Hassan Al Kontar was arrested on Monday by Malaysian police for remaining in a “forbidden area” of Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s terminal two. Al Kontar, 37, had been living inside KLIA’s…
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Hassan Al Kontar: A Life in Limbo – CBC The World this Weekend
KUALA LUMPUR – Hassan Al Kontar is a 37-year-old Syrian living at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for six months. Human rights defenders inside Malaysia have advised him not to seek asylum in the country because it’s not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Canadian volunteers are trying to bring Al Kontar to Canada…
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Rohingya Refugees are Rushing to Escape Monsoon Season
Experts fear a return of the kind of desperation that fed the 2015 boat crisis as the storms hit Bangladesh’s coast. BANGKOK, Thailand – Torrential rains along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border are threatening to make an already grim situation for the nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled genocidal violence back home even worse as the monsoon storms…
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Malaysia’s Rohingya Refugee Women’s Theatre Company
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Inside a YMCA gymnasium, an actress takes the stage and the audience goes quiet. Members of Malaysia’s state security forces are in attendance. The scene set is a family living room. An actress mimes as if to clean. There’s nothing subversive in this scene. A male actor steps on stage looking…
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Malaysia: A Refugee Conundrum
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – “People always ask me, why are you helping refugees when there are people, here at home, who need help? “This is home for refugees”, said Heidy Quah, recipient of the 2017 Queen’s Young Leaders Award for her work co-founding Malaysia’s Refuge for the Refugees. Quah, aged 23 years, founded the Kuala…
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Adam Bemma 