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Part IV: Plight of Rohingya refugees
The Rohingyas of Burma and Bangladesh
By Dr. Habib Siddiqui
4.1 Condition of Refugees in Bangladesh:
In Bangladesh today there are approximately 20,000 “documented” Rohingya refugees, out of a quarter million that had arrived in 1991-2, escaping military persecution in Burma. They live in two camps of Kutupalong and Nayapara. Most of the original refugees were forcibly repatriated into the lawless country of Burma, where they continue to face all sorts of human rights abuse in the hands of Myanmar authority. The remaining refugees have refused to return because they fear human rights abuses, including religious persecution.
Unfortunately, the condition within those two refugee camps is simply awful and lack adequate facilities for a healthy living. Children are deprived of their basic education and healthcare. They also face harassment from the government authorities.
Besides, hundreds of thousands of “undocumented” Rohingyas are living outside these two camps in sub-human condition with all their uncertainty. Many refugees are camped at a roadside facility at Teknaf, a border town in south-east end of Bangladesh under unpleasant conditions. There is no help from any quarter for these refugees.
These refugees are also blocked from nominal opportunities of re-settlement in a third country or settlement within Bangladesh.
The NGOs, international human rights and humanitarian bodies are often not allowed to visit the areas of undocumented refugees.
The UNHCR has announced on March 12, 2006 that it will reduce refugee Subsistence Allowance (SA). A refugee who is a head of family will receive 45 taka (72 cents) and a dependent will receive 22.50 taka per day. Previously, refugees received 90 taka per day for the SA. This decision is bound to worsen the misery of the refugees.
4.2 Situation of Refugees in Other Countries:
There is no international agency to look after the interest of the stateless Rohingya. Because of their lack of legal identity, they are not allowed to work or hold work permit by any name. An estimated 15-20,000 Rohingyas work as illegal workers in Thailand. Their children are deprived of basic human rights. As with most new refugees in Thailand, the Thai authorities reject most new Muslim arrivals whether they are Rohingyas or Karens or from any other state, claiming that they cannot be refugees since they are not 'fleeing fighting'. They are allowed to stay in the camps but are frequently threatened with repatriation. The situation is only likely to get worse in the near future with the new Thai policy of not allowing any new refugees to come to Thailand. Thailand's hostile policy toward migrant workers makes working in Thailand very risky, and many have been sent back as illegal immigrants, who face persecution in Burma.
The number of refugees in Malaysia is estimated at 8,000. The situation there is slightly better than that faced in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Thailand. However, they face constant threat of deportation. Some of the refugees in the Arab countries have been able to find gainful jobs.
Overall, lack of their citizenship papers makes it difficult for them to integrate and find better jobs wherever they are. A concerted effort is required from prosperous countries to integrate the refugee community. The push-in attempts towards repatriation of the refugees is criminal and must be stopped. Adequate facilities must be provided in the refugee camps so that their basic rights to health, education, food and welfare are met.
4.3 Conclusion:
The SPDC regime has learned to exploit religious sentiments to persecute non-Buddhists and ethnically cleanse the Rohingya from the Arakan. Their power is rooted in the deep racism that has permeated Burmese society since its beginnings; not only the racial supremacy complex which many Burmans are brought up with, but the racism of the Karen against the Burmans, the Burmans against the Shan, the Shan against the Wa, the Wa against the Shan, the Mon against the Burmans, the Rakhine against the Rohingyas, the Burmans against the Chinese, the Christians against the Buddhists, and everyone against the Muslims. The list goes on and on, and the military has always exploited it to turn people against each other and thereby increase its hold onto power.
The SPDC propaganda encourages a blind racist nationalism, full of references to ‘protecting the race’, meaning that if Burmans do not oppress other nationalities then they will themselves be oppressed, ‘national reconsolidation’, meaning assimilation, and preventing ‘disintegration of the Union’, meaning that if the Army falls then some kind of ethnic chaos would ensue.
A transition to democracy alone will not be enough to prevent the people tearing each other apart, particularly if it is a unitary, non-federal democracy. The first and biggest step in bringing about an end to the racism problem is to admit that it exists and to recognize its scale. Freedom-loving, democratic-minded groups working outside must form a united front to iron out their differences and shun racism and bigotry. If they fail to do so, Burma will remain a country at war with itself, whether or not today’s SPDC is replaced by another government - civil or military.
The SPDC regime is guilty of non-compliance of each of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Oppression of Muslims in Burma, esp. the Rohingyas in Arakan who live there has not eased a bit despite the assurances from the SPDC and the UNHCR. No one should be fooled by the empty promises and assurances of the pariah regime that rules Burma. What the SPDC junta is doing to the Rohingya people is nothing short of a genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaign. It is one of the worst crimes of our time when we ignore the gargantuan crimes of this rogue regime, especially its treatment of the minority Rohingya people, who have been effectively denied their citizenship right. Policies of confiscation, destruction, exclusion, discrimination, socio-cultural depravation and restriction on movement have prevented them from developing socially and economically, and are deliberately designed to strangulate them as a community. These policies, which amount to ethnic cleansing, are creating push-factors for forced migration and therefore constitute the root causes of the ongoing refugee exodus. If these processes of marginalization and gross violations of human rights against the Rohingya people are allowed to continue there won’t be a single Rohingya left in Arakan within the next fifty years. They will be an extinct community, much like what had happened to the native population of Tasmania.
I often question what is the basis for a nation's claim to independence or self-determination? Must a people wander in the wilderness for two millennia and suffer repeated persecution, humiliation and genocide to qualify? Until now, history's answer to the question has been pragmatic and brutal - a nation is a people tough enough to grab the land it wants and hangs onto it. Period!
How about the rights of a minority community to survive with their culture and traditions intact? Do they need to be ‘children’ of a ‘higher’ God or follow Judeo-Christian morality to qualify? What makes the children of a ‘lesser’ God to be forgotten and denied the same treatment and privilege that was granted hitherto to the people of East Timor and some other hotspots? Could not a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite determine the fate of these forgotten people of our time to decide for themselves what is best for them? What about all those scores of statutes and articles of Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Convention, Treatment of Prisoners (political and non-combatants), etc., etc.? Don’t they matter? Which agency is responsible to guarantee those rights? If it is the U.N., why is it inactive to bring about desired change? How shall we all be judged by our posterity for letting such colossal abuses of human rights to continue for this long?
Since 1999, the USA has designated Burma as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act for severe violations of religious freedom. In a new report, entitled ‘Threat to Peace’, Bishop Tutu of South Africa and former President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic have called on the UN Security Council to take up the situation in Burma immediately. Recently the European Union has taken a similar stand. But such designations and reports are not enough. These powerful nations need to walk the talk. They cannot say one thing and do nothing, or worse still reward and condone heinous crimes against humanity through their business dealings with the pariah regime to whom human rights mean nothing. Greedy for profit, shamelessly, the British and American Tobacco and oil companies are the greatest sponsors of the rogue SPDC regime providing a lifeline for its survival.
Of particular concern is the current hobnobbing of the Burmese regime with its neighbors. One of these neighbors is the most populous country and the other the so-called largest democracy on earth. The bilateral trade between China and Myanmar hit $1.2 billion last year (accounting for nearly a quarter of Myanmar’s total trade volume). Predictions are that it will grow significantly this year. The bilateral Burma–India trade volume is projected at $2 billion for this year. It was around $470 million during the 2003-04 year. What a blatant mockery of people’s trust! And then there are powerful governments that don’t mind invading a sovereign country on false charges, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, but are not perturbed about the most repressive and savage regime of our time when clear evidences of gross violations of human rights are so plenty and sufferings so unbearable!
It is high time that our generation takes a stand against the Myanmar regime demanding action from our respective governments so that the democratic and basic human rights of all ethnic and religious communities, including the Rohingya people, are protected and guaranteed under the UN supervision. The Myanmar regime must be forced to step down and tried for war crimes against humanity. All trades and commerce that sustain this evil military regime must immediately be halted. All political prisoners must be released, and the democratic forces that had participated in the 1990 election be allowed to run the country under a Federal system, granting autonomy to each of the States and Divisions (something granted in 1948).
[About the author: Dr. Habib Siddiqui is a long-time human rights activist. He has written extensively in Op/Ed columns in newspapers, magazines, journals and the Internet. His writing combines meticulous research with personal experience of displaced Rohingyas from Arakan in Myanmar (Burma). He has also worked on human rights issues in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Palestine, and among American Muslims in the post-9/11 era. He can be reached at saeva@aol.com.]
Part I: Nightmare, fiction or a living reality?
Part II: Muslims in Burma
Part III: Muslims in Arakan
Part IV: Plight of Rohingya refugees
March 31, 2006
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