Stop the blame game: Former Indonesian president on migrant crisis
Jakarta
rnIndonesia's former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yesterday urged nations to seek a solution instead of assigning blame over the migrant crisis engulfing Southeast Asia, warning that hundreds of lives are at stake.Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand have triggered international outrage by turning away boatloads of desperate Rohingya migrants from Myanmar as well as Bangladeshis, who are now in limbo at sea with little food and nowhere to go.Yudhoyono, whose presidency ended in October after ten years as leader, said the situation -- Southeast Asia's biggest migrant crisis since the end of the Vietnam War -- needed an urgent regional response, not endless finger pointing. "It is not fair that the blame is Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand's alone," he wrote on his official Twitter account on Sunday. "Myanmar and Bangladesh cannot wash their hands of this." Myanmar's cooperation is deemed vital to solving the crisis as thousands of those at sea are Muslim Rohingya fleeing oppression in the mainly Buddhist country.
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