A Tidal Migration

"At this point, I'm not sure what the concrete next steps are or should be. There is a real sense o f urgency, but there doesn't seem to be a clear mechanism in this region for responding to something like this."
Vivian Tan, UNHCR regional press officer, Bangkok

An armed police officer stands guard as ethnic Rohingya men gather upon arrival at a temporary shelter for the migrants whose boats were washed ashore on Sumatra island on Sunday, in Lhoksukon, Aceh province, Indonesia, Wednesday, May 13, 2015. More than 1,600 migrants and refugees have landed on the shores of Malaysia and Indonesia in the past week and thousands more are believed to have been abandoned at sea, floating on boats with little or no food after traffickers literally jumped ship fearing a crackdown. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

The great surge of migrants desperate to escape threats to their existence and choosing to expose themselves to other threats to their existence since one threat appears more inimical to their futures than the other, are paying conscienceless, unscrupulous human hyenas to arrange for sea passage to Europe. People desperate to escape imminent death looming over them in the countries of their origin where privation and oppression is all they have ever known, are prepared to gamble that facing dangerous seas in inadequate vessels will offer them better odds on salvation.

It is Muslim populations from Africa, from the Middle East, from Myanmar who seek to escape religious persecution, tribal and ethnic oppression, inter- and intra-state conflicts, and above all the malign barbarism of fundamentalist Islamists in their sectarian conflicts and their focus on conquest of non-Muslim countries through jihadist violence, or alternately the forced migration leading to an inundation of European countries by Muslim hordes seeking haven.

Tens of thousands of Africans and Arabs have taken to the Mediterranean, and thousands have plunged into the seas to drown in their attempts to reach Europe to escape their social and economic deprivation, the conflicts forced upon them by viral Islamism in its violent paroxysms of rendering service to the Islamist doctrine of tribal and sectarian hatreds demanding that Sunnis slaughter Shiites and the reverse in a cataclysmic clash of the sects.

And taking inspiration from the hope that pity and compassion mandate that comparatively wealthy Europe absorb hopelessly fearful Muslims from their fate as fodder in the internecine wars, the Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh, fleeing their homes in Myanmar are also embarking in their thousands hoping to take refuge and find their futures in the continent of Europe, which they imagine is prepared to absorb them all.

Suffering from state sanctioned discrimination and persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, scorning them as illegal immigrants even while many have lived for generations in the country, they flee the violence that has been unleashed upon them. A new exodus of boat people seeking shelter elsewhere, other than where employment is refused them, let alone citizenship and the merest hint of societal equality, denied.

Most have attempted to reach Malaysia, which has conducted its own crackdowns on human trafficking networks. Reflecting what European leaders are going through, attempting to figure out how to stem the tide of teeming human beings determined to escape a future with no hope for themselves and their offspring. Embarking from Libyan waters to reach Italy, Greece and Malta, hoping to get to Britain and Germany.

Abandoned at sea by the smugglers who take their money, their inadequate vessels, short of food and water become traps. And even while many boat people are rescued after their abandonment, left to fend for themselves, countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslim countries, have no wish to absorb the human flotsam that washes up on their shores.

Their own countries, from Bangladesh, to Burma (Myanmar), Libya to Syria, Gaza to Somalia and Eritrea, have failed their human needs, offering them oppression and poverty, and other Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have no wish to absorb the refugees, even while wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and its Gulf cousins make no move to bring in a share of Muslim refugees.

Which hasn't stopped Saudi Arabia from pursuing leadership in the United Nations of its human rights group. All the Muslim countries are content to have Europe deal with the aftershocks of their refusal to accept responsibility for the welfare of huge numbers of Muslim migrants in need. Which spells out rather incongruously Muslim compassion for fellow Muslims.