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The Rohingya crisis can’t stay Bangladesh’s burden,
prime minister says
(Munir
Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty)
NEW YORK — About two
years ago, Bangladesh let in some 750,000 Rohingya people fleeing a
military-led campaign of ethnic cleansing on the other side of the border.
Authorities in Myanmar view the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority,
as interlopers and noncitizens — a position largely rejected by the international
community. Marooned in squalid camps, the Rohingya in Bangladesh face a hopeless situation.
Do they contemplate returning home to a country where their political
rights will not be guaranteed and threats of violence remain? Or do they
remain in limbo in the camps, eking out a bleak existence in a country that
is straining under their presence?
In her speech last week
from the dais of the U.N. General Assembly, Bangladeshi Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina said the international community must “understand the
untenability” of the status quo. Her nation, she added, is dealing with “a
crisis which is Myanmar’s own making.”
Hasina is sympathetic
to the Rohingya plight. “It’s a big burden for Bangladesh, no doubt about
it. But what they faced was almost some kind of genocide,” she told Today’s
WorldView at a midtown hotel in Manhattan on Friday, referring to the
violence meted out on Rohingya communities in 2017. “Killing, torturing,
arson, rape, so many things happened. They were bound to run away from
their country for their safety and security.”
Although there have
been agreements with Myanmar, also known as Burma, to repatriate small
numbers of refugees, the overwhelming majority are too afraid to return.
Rohingya rights advocates say the refugees fear returning to a precarious
state in Myanmar, where they could be vulnerable to attacks from the sort
of pro-government vigilante mobs and military forces who razed their villages and
murdered and raped their loved ones.
They demand a guarantee
of citizenship from state authorities, something the government of Myanmar
is hardly willing to oblige. A citizenship law enacted in 1982 stripped the
Rohingya of the same privileges and citizenship rights of other ethnic
minority groups in the country. Officials in Myanmar cast the Rohingya as a
“Bengali” population and describe the violent campaign in 2017 as a
counterterrorism operation against dangerous insurgents in Rakhine state,
which borders Bangladesh.
Others
are not so convinced. “The Myanmar government
are unaffected and maintain that these were efforts to fight terrorists,”
lamented Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad at the United Nations
last week. “This is what we are disappointed with, because we know that
what is truly happening is a genocide.”
That’s not exactly
hyperbole. A recent U.N.-commissioned report warned
that the same violent conditions that provoked the 2017 exodus persist in
Rakhine state. “There is a strong inference of genocidal intent on the part
of [Myanmar’s government], there is a serious risk that genocidal actions
may recur, and Myanmar is failing in its obligation to prevent genocide, to
investigate genocide and to enact effective legislation criminalizing and
punishing genocide,” the report concluded.
On the sidelines of
U.N. meetings last week, the top U.S. official for foreign aid, Mark Green,
spoke to ABC News about what he saw on a
fact-finding trip to western Myanmar and the refugee camps in Bangladesh:
“I’ll never forget this: A young Rohingya father looked me in the eyes and
said, ‘There are no teachers; my kids can’t go to school. We don’t have a
mosque, so we can’t worship. I’m not allowed to leave without written
permission, which I never get. And the only food I’ve got is what you give
me. What do I tell my kids?’ ”
“Myanmar has done
nothing to dismantle the system of violence and persecution and the
Rohingya who remain in Rakhine live in the same dire circumstances that
they did prior to the events of August 2017,” Yanghee Lee, the U.N. special
rapporteur on Myanmar, told reporters earlier this month.
The
situation in Bangladesh is also grim. Hasina
said that what is now her country’s burden could turn into a regional
crisis. An increasingly disaffected, jobless refugee population is ripe for
radicalization and extremism, she said. “If they stay longer, very easily
they can be converted or join” militant groups, Hasina said.
Her government confirmed
new measures last week to build barbed-wire fences around Rohingya
camps and to patrol their perimeters. Bangladeshi authorities already
have cut Internet and cellphone access to the Rohingya and, in some
instances, confiscated smartphones and SIM cards from refugees. It also
plans to relocate possibly tens of thousands of refugees to large facilities
erected on a low-lying silt island off the Bangladeshi coast known as
Bhashan Char, which critics fear could be subject to flooding and other
natural disasters.
Hasina balked at the
“talk” from nongovernmental organizations and international agencies and
said her government is acting in the interests of the refugees’ “safety and
security.” She pointed to reports of girls and young women falling prey to illicit human-trafficking
networks that have reached into the ramshackle camps, home to more than
1 million Rohingya refugees.
“Through these mobile
phones, they are doing drugs business, arms business, even women and child
trafficking,” Hasina said.
The
Bangladeshi prime minister says the Rohingya are welcome to stay for now. “They
are in my soil,” she said. “What else can we do?”
She said she hopes the
international community can apply more pressure on her neighbor. “The
problem with Myanmar is that they don’t listen to anybody,” she said. When
asked what more can be done to squeeze Myanmar — including a possible arms
embargo and tougher sanctions than those already imposed by the United States on the
country’s top brass — she demurred.
“I don’t want to fight
with anybody. I want a peaceful solution, because they are my next door
neighbor,” Hasina told Today’s WorldView. “But if the international
community thinks that those kind of sanctions work, then fine, well and
good. But I can’t suggest that.”
Hasina indicated that
she has discussed the matter with Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader who
has presided over the country’s now-stalled democratic transition.
“She blamed the
military. She told me that the military doesn’t listen to her that much,”
Hasina said, referring to a 2016 conversation at a regional summit hosted
in India. Suu Kyi has since followed in lockstep with the country’s
military and refuses to even use the word “Rohingya” to describe the
ethnic group long persecuted by the central state in Rakhine.
“Now I can see she has
changed her position,” Hasina added.
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